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Fez – During a consultation day held in the city of Essaouira on November 16, Andre Azoulay, advisor of the King Mohammed VI and president-founder of the Essaouira-Mogador Association revealed that the city holds the world’s oldest remnants of the medieval sugar industry.
“It is only in Morocco, in Essaouira, that are now visible the most emblematic and complete vestiges of the birth of the pre-industrial and industrial cycles of sugar cultivation and production in the world”, announced Azoulay on the day organized by Essaouira Innovation Lab in the aftermath of the discovery.
Azoulay commended Andre Bonnal, Gilles Texier, and Edouard Pottier, the team of French scientists living in Essaouira who worked for years on this “Souiri legacy” dating back to the Saadian period.
In this regard, he highlighted: “the exceptional quality and size of the vestiges of the Ida Ougard sugar factory, impressive vestiges bearing the seal of Ahmed El Mansour Eddahbi who had made the choice to make Morocco one of the leading countries in the world of sugar production at that time.”
Read also: World’s Oldest Jewelry Discovered in Essaouira, Morocco
Historically speaking, the sugar industry dates back to a period as old as the Indian civilization itself before it spread towards the Mediterranean in the 13th century.
Trade in the “white gold” experienced its golden age during the 16th century in North America, especially Brazil and the Caribbean Islands, where sugar production became more industrialized relying on more complex chains of operations.
It was at this period that the transatlantic slave trade was introduced to the “New World” with around 12,5 million human beings shipped from Africa to the Americas between 1501 and 1867. The slaves were used to work on sugar plantations.
After the abolishment of slavery in the Americas, physical traces of pre-industrial labor gradually vanished as well, making the Saadian sugar industry in Essaouira “the only site in the world of a food and industrial sector [sugar production] that had known its golden age in the 16th century”, explained Azoulay.
This recent discovery will be an added asset to Essaouira’s rich heritage that is on its way to becoming an essential reference for an exhaustive reading of humanity’s history since the Homo sapiens age, concluded Azoulay.
