Podcast Summary: New Books Network – Interview with David Singerman on Unrefined: How Capitalism Reinvented Sugar (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Dr. David Singerman
Date: October 11, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode explores how sugar—once a rare and valuable delicacy—became ubiquitous in modern diets, focusing on David Singerman’s book Unrefined: How Capitalism Reinvented Sugar. The discussion weaves together science, law, politics, technology, and empire to uncover how sugar's transformation mirrors the evolution of capitalism itself. Singerman traces the journey of sugar from colonial cane field to modern grocery shelf, exposing the historical conflicts over its production, standardization, value, and meaning.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Origins and Motivation for the Book (02:39–06:42)

• Singerman introduces himself as a historian of science at the University of Virginia with an interdisciplinary background. The 2008 financial crisis led him to trace capitalism’s roots through commodity histories, particularly sugar.

• He draws inspiration from 19th-century works depicting disruption, such as Melville’s The Confidence Man and Adams’ Education of Henry Adams, where trust and dislocation become central to understanding capitalism.

  “What it really captures is this 19th century sense of dislocation in terms of trust, right? Because capitalism was now throwing people and things together from much further around the world much faster than it ever had before.” —Singerman (05:51)

2. What is Sugar? Defining and Disputing Identity (06:42–15:36)

• The central animating question: What is sugar, and who gets to decide?

• Traditionally, sugar meant cane sugar, but the 18th-century discovery of beet sugar in Europe caused controversy, shaking up markets and geopolitics.

• By the late 18th century, sugar consumption in England skyrocketed due to slave plantation production:

  “In 1670, people in England ate £2 of sugar per person. By 1730 it was £12, and by 1800 it was £24 a person.” —Singerman (11:04)

• Beet sugar symbolized hope for abolitionists to break free from slavery-based colonial economies, but planters fought this threat to their power.

3. Technology, Expertise, and Globalization: The Glasgow Connection (16:24–26:33)

• Glasgow emerges as the global hub for manufacturing sugar machinery, despite being far from cane fields.

  “How do you make machines there for this very...high pressure, precise, time-sensitive, agriculturally integrated manufacturer? How do you design and produce those machines in a place where you have no access to the kind of circumstances of their use?” —Singerman (18:40)

• Standardization “on paper” required even more customization in practice; Glasgow firms built bespoke equipment and sent engineers to plantations.

  • Evidence: Tracings of broken gear teeth sent back for repairs and century-old machinery still found in the Caribbean (24:42–26:33).

4. Plantation Know-How and the Politics of Knowledge (26:33–31:02)

• Enslaved and later free Black workers were often the real experts on sugar crystallization, much to planters’ frustration.

• The rise of chemists in sugar production aimed to “desk ill” the process and wrest power from artisans, shifting valuation from sensory attributes (color, texture, taste) to chemical purity (sucrose content).

  “The process of making sugar and the skill in doing it...lay in the hands of almost always of enslaved people... The introduction of chemists...was an effort not just to...make the production of sugar more efficient...but basically to de skill the labor process, right. And to take power over this process from the hands of workers in general, but more specifically enslaved people.” —Singerman (28:05)

5. From Plantation to Refinery: The Rise of Sugar Monopolies and the State (31:02–35:52)

• Distinction between raw sugar (produced near cane fields) and refined sugar (processed in urban refineries).
• In the late 19th century, sugar tariffs become the U.S. government’s single largest revenue source—“the government became addicted to sugar too.” (34:47)
• Tariff rates connected directly to the “purity” of sugar, triggering fierce contests over its assessment.

6. Measurement, Manipulation, and Corruption: Dutch Standard and Polariscope (35:52–44:55)

• The subjective “Dutch Standard”—a set of reference jars—proves inadequate for new, more standardized sugars, fueling disputes and corruption.

  • Introduction of the Polariscope (39:00–44:55): A scientific instrument for measuring sucrose content, meant to bring objectivity.

  • However, it transferred all power to unaccountable chemists, and made bribery easier:

    “It may be more objective, but you also have put it all in the hands of an expert who is themselves unaccountable, right? So no one else can see what the chemist is doing...” —Singerman (42:10)

7. Supreme Court Battles and Technicalities—Temperature and Law (47:13–51:43)

• Even minute technicalities—such as the temperature at which a Polariscope reading was taken—became the subject of regulatory and legal struggle, reaching the Supreme Court, as the value (and thus tax) of every shipment could hinge on fractions of a percent.
• The case illustrates the tensions between state regulatory ambition and scientific uncertainty, with the powerful Sugar Trust fighting to maintain its position.

8. Maintaining the Monopoly: Contracts, Allowances, and Subtle Control (52:32–60:16)

• The late-1800s “great merger movement” led to the formation of the Sugar Trust (a near-monopoly by American Sugar Refining Co.).

• Monopolists set detailed “allowances”—contractual schedules of price penalty/bonus for fractional differences in sucrose content—which were enforced so subtly they evaded antitrust prosecution:

  “I discover a conspiracy, basically, by the sugar refiners to manipulate this schedule of allowances in such a way that it helps maintain their monopoly, but in such a, like, nerdy, technical way that even when the Justice Department is suing them…they don’t figure this scheme out.” —Singerman (59:10)

9. The Physical and the Paper: Standardizing Sugar for the Stock Exchange (60:18–67:26)

• Despite rhetoric of standardization, the actual variability of sugar remained. To facilitate global trading, industry eventually “standardized” sugar on paper: futures contracts assumed fixed purity and depreciation, substituting contractual fiction for chemical fact.

  • Only when sugar was finally delivered and refined would the real composition be checked, with financial adjustments made ex-post.

  “They decided to get rid of the messy physical problem of measuring the quality of sugar...abstracting away the messiness of actual physical sugar and transforming it into a stable commodity, a stable enough commodity that it could be bought and sold on paper.” —Singerman (66:56)

10. Closing Thoughts and Next Project (67:47–68:37)

• Singerman reveals his next major research: a contemporary history of doping in sports, drawing thematic parallels of technical expertise, corruption, and contested knowledge with the story of sugar.

  “There are interesting similarities...difficulties of knowing things, about knowing difficult natural facts, and the political economy of corruption.” —Singerman (68:18)

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the historical and sensory idea of ‘purity’:

  “There’s nothing inherent or natural about the idea that the valuable thing in sugar is the sucrose...The idea that purity is only a chemical term seems like a kind of claim about nature, but it’s actually a historical claim.” —Singerman (29:40)

• On the (false) triumph of instrument-driven objectivity:

  “It’s now much easier to bribe this chemist if that’s what you want to do…so this question about whether this scientific instrument is actually less prone to corruption and more objective is really at the heart of the disputes here.” —Singerman (43:27)

• On the complexity of standardization:

  “The running sort of conflict in the book is the attempt by industry and the government to sort of treat sugar as if it is a consistent, standardizable, precisely measurable substance, when actually the substance of sugar itself remains variable and volatile.” —Singerman (62:23)

Key Timestamps

• [02:39–06:42] – Book origins, capitalism, and inspiration
• [07:07–15:36] – What is sugar? Cane vs. beet debates, empire, and abolition
• [16:24–26:33] – Glasgow’s engineering feats and the customization of machinery
• [27:02–31:02] – Knowledge politics: enslaved expertise vs. chemist authority
• [33:53–35:52] – U.S. sugar tariffs as pivotal state revenue—and a political minefield
• [35:52–44:55] – Dutch Standard vs. Polariscope: objectivity, expertise, and corruption
• [47:13–51:43] – Supreme Court struggles: technical disputes over temperature
• [52:32–60:16] – Monopoly maintenance, price allowances, and cartel discipline
• [60:18–67:26] – The abstraction of sugar: futures markets and the paper standard
• [67:47–68:37] – Next projects: From sugar to doping in sports

Tone & Style

The conversation is rich, erudite, yet engaging—balancing technical depth with broad historical narrative. Singerman and Melcher maintain an accessible yet stimulating tone, peppering the discussion with intrigue (“I discover a conspiracy…”, “bribing chemists”) and making complex ideas approachable.

In Summary:
“How Capitalism Reinvented Sugar” reveals the surprisingly turbulent story behind a seemingly simple commodity, arguing that sugar’s transformation tells us as much about empire, technological change, and the meaning of objectivity as it does about sweetness itself. From the cane fields to the trading floors, sugar’s journey is a microcosm of modern capitalism’s challenges, contradictions, and consequences.