ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book combines together the stories of seven diverse crops that came to be grown in plantations - sugarcane, banana, cotton, tea, tobacco, coffee and rubber. It explores the evolutionary history of each crop with the social and political upheavals associated with their cultivation and trade. There is no archeological record of when and where humans first began growing sugarcane as a crop, but it was most likely domesticated about 10,000 years ago in what is now New Guinea. The early farmers surely brought dramatic changes in the sugar content of sugarcane by starting new gardens year after year with only the sweetest individuals. Cotton had a most improbable origin involving species in two continents that somehow managed to hybridize. The cotton species now grown were domesticated about 6,000 years ago.
