Glucose

Spices were not the only thing fueling the global market however.  Sugar, also known as sucrose, was in great demand during this same time period, being primarily used as a sweetener.  Sugar was originally a product of southern Asia that spread to the Middle East and was later brought to places like the West Indies and Brazil.  The cultivation of sugarcane was labor intensive, so plantation owners growing this crop in the New World looked to native Americans as a worksource.  When the natives proved to be too weak for such labor, many having been afflicted by foreign diseases brought by the Europeans, the plantation owners began to buy slaves from Africa to do their dirty work.  Sugarcane production was the primary reason for African slaves being brought to the America's.  It is estimated that nearly two-thirds of these slaves had worked on sugar plantations.  Without sugar, the slave trade may have never had the opportunity to become as extensive as it did.

But what is it exactly that makes up this sweet compound?  Sucrose is the product of a glucose and a fructose molecule bound by an oxygen atom.  Both glucose and fructose are monosaccharides, which are also known as simple sugars.  The sucrose molecule is a disaccharide, being made up of two monosaccharides.  A molecule made of three or more monosaccharides is called a polysaccharide.  Glucose, like most other simple sugars such as fructose and galactose, is made of a six carbon chain that is partially looped by an oxygen atom.  Though it plays an equal role in the composition of sucrose as fructose does, it is typically seen as the most prominant, because it is also the most common of the monosaccharides.  It also makes the disaccharide lactose, a major component of milk products, when it binds to the galactose molecule.  Without the glucose molecule, humans would not likely be able to survive, but that fact aside, the slave trade would have never become as big as it had, and interest in New World markets might have even ended up being unsubstantial for Europeans powers to compete over.  This would have had a drastic impact on today's society, especially in the United States.