food of humanity, how it is obtained and how it is used". The museum's permanent exhibits cover the science and nutrition of sugar and its history from technological, cultural and political standpoints. They are organised into seven thematic groups: Sugarcane This section describes the biology and cultivation history of sugarcane (Saccharum spp.), from its use more than 10,000 years ago by the natives of Melanesia as a source of nutrition to the first report of it in the West by generals of Alexander the Great, successive improvements in sugar refining and its planting on the island of Hispaniola. The exhibits include sugar harvesting and refining machinery and information on agricultural pests which affect sugar. Sugar in colonialism Since the climate in the Caribbean was well suited to growing sugar, beginning in the 16th century, sugar was a major product of Western colonialism. Refining the sugar in the colonies where it was grown was legally discouraged or forbidden, so it was shipped back to Europe. The exhibits include models of the ships used and portray the development of major centres of sugar trading and refining in cities like Antwerp, Amsterdam, Bordeaux, Hamburg and London and the hard conditions for workers in both the sugar plantations and the sugar refineries. In the European refineries, the sugar industry pioneered the use of guest workers, in England predominantly Germans, who had a reputation for hard work, good humour, and the ability to withstand the heat. The slave trade The great demand for sugar in Europe and the resulting ever increasing need for plantation workers led to the near extinction of the natives and made sugar production dependent on African slaves. Current estimates are that between 1500 and 1850, some 20 million people were forcibly transported to the Americas. Exhibits in the Sklavenwirtschaft / Plantagenwirtschaft (Slave trade / Plantation trade) section of the museum depict the inhumane conditions on slave ships and give glimpses into the lives of the workers in the New World. The European demand for sugar was so great, however, and the resulting wealth of the "West India interest" so influential, that despite the boycott efforts of the 'Anti-Sacharrites', not until sugar could be made from sugar beets did antislavery advocates prevail, as for example they did in England in 1807 with the passage of the Slave Trade Act. The sugar beet in Prussia The discovery of beet sugar changed sugar from