Sugar: A Bittersweet Poison

Faizan Hussain, Michael Karr, Neil Suri, Berber Jin Junior Division Website

Group

Process Paper
Why we chose this topic: We decided to participate in National History Day this year because we had experience with the program from the year before and we wanted to compete again. At the outset, we deliberated about which topic we should research for our project. Faizan wanted to study conflicts within former Yugoslavia; Berber wanted to do the Haitian Revolution; and Neil and Michael wanted to research muckrakers in the 1900s. However, Neil changed his position. He wanted to research sugar because he had visited a sugar plantation in Peru, and wondered how sugar came to be made. We were drawn in by Neils interest, and we decided to research sugar for our NHD project.

How we conducted the research: We divided and conquered our work by splitting the jobs of research amongst ourselves. Faizan was assigned the task of annotating articles for research, while Neil and Berber wrote most of our document sections. Michael had done all the formatting of our document sections and added most of the aesthetics to our website. We used researching facilities such as JSTOR and Britannica to gather articles for our project.

How we created and developed the website: Choosing the section to compete in our NHD project was very difficult. None of the sections particularly stood out from the others. We first eliminated a performance because none of us had particularly good acting skills, nor had experience to actually execute one. We then ruled

out an exhibit because we could not incorporate videos or interviews into one. We were eventually left with ideas of doing a documentary or a website. However, we decided to do the website section since that would allow us to post documents on our project.

Our work on the project was a very tedious one. First, we decided on our topic for our project by discussing it with each other and taking group votes. Next, we chose our medium for presenting our research. We then started researching for articles related to sugar using library research tools that were available, then organizing our research into sections. We eventually completed our document sections and finished our website headings.

How our project related to the theme: Our presentation fits in very neatly into this years theme, Reform, Reaction, and Revolution. Our research related to the reaction theme in that a cycle of reactions by the slaves and slave-owners occurred within their struggle for power. Sugar also relates to revolution in that it transformed the concepts of slavery and economics due to its high demand and need for laborers. Reform in sugar is very evident as many people tried to reform the slavery that resulted from the large labor force needed to produce it. Sugar devastated our world with its hidden strings of slavery, death, and oligarchy attached to its immense profits.