In the 1530s, Portuguese settlers in Brazil began planting sugar cane. First native labor was employed, then later, slaves from Africa. By 1630, the area around Recife in northeastern Brazil was producing more raw sugar than all the rest of the world. Much of it was sent to Amsterdam, the financial center and principal marketplace of the developing capitalist world; when the Dutch West India Company seized control of the sugar trade, many Dutchmen sailed for Brazil to cash in on the boom.

WHITE GOLD is set in the 1630s and tells of the initial rise of sugar through the dramatized story of one Dutch merchant who takes over a Portuguese sugar plantation in Brazil. Obsessed with the development of a profitable sugar plantation, the Dutchman also becomes the master of African slaves.

After 1654, the Dutch withdrew from Brazil and encouraged British planters in Barbados to grow sugar. Thus sugar, along with it slavery, spread to the Caribbean.

"Choice Pick... [Curling's and Clayton's] curiously effective amalgam of actuality and simulation reveals some unsuspected truths about the way the wonder bean has also kept commerce and politics in a state of maximum alertness ever since the first revivifying cupful of the brew was swallowed."—The Times (London)

"College courses in international economics and business would find these materials of interest, especially those dealing with problems of emerging economies."—Library Journal

"COMMODITIES delves deep into the quagmire of the World Debt Crisis, providing a powerful argument against the depoliticisation of events like 'Feed the World,' which insists on treating famine relief as an issue unrelated to the politics of inequality."—New Music Express

"Recommended for all libraries."—Choice