• Territories:

    Worldwide.

  • Production year:

    2025

  • Language(s):

    German, English, French

  • Rights:

    TV, DVD, NON-THEATRICAL, INTERNET, VOD

What is the price of our addiction to sugar? For five centuries, it has been a driving force in our history. The pleasure of its sweetness and the profits from its trade have justified the worst: conquest, colonization, slavery, and forced labor. Across Europe, the Caribbean, the Americas, and the Indian Ocean, in search of the sources of our addiction, the first episode of this historical investigation reveals the dark side of “white gold,” from Christopher Columbus to the dawn of the 20th century.

The history of the conquest of the Americas cannot be told without mentioning sugar, and the history of sugar cannot be told without mentioning the triangular trade and colonization. A luxury product that became a staple of the European diet, sugar is a globalized and destructive success story. From the beginning of colonization in the 15th century to the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century,
it contributed to Europe's prosperity at the cost of enslaving the indigenous peoples of the Americas, then, on a massive scale,
men and women from Africa. The successive abolitions of slavery in the 19th century weakened this highly profitable sugar economy. But it held on, and even invented new models of servitude. Since its origins, the sugar economy has constantly reinvented itself. At the end of the 19th century, it was booming and about to reach its peak. Its fate was now linked to that of the new power, the United States.