Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World. My great-grandparents had come from India to Guyana—then British Guiana—in the late nineteenth century to work on the sugar plantations. Sugar was the backbone of the British Empire at that time. The demand was huge, for sugar had gone from being a luxury that only kings could afford to a necessity. Even the poorest of London shopgirls took sugar in their tea.

Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833, thirty years before the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States. But even after they freed their slaves, the sugar plantation owners were desperate to find cheap labor to cut cane and process sugar. So the British owners looked to another part of the empire—India—and recruited thousands of men and women, who were given five-year contracts and a passage back.

What kind of inference can the reader make about the importance of sugar in the late nineteenth century?

Sugar was central to people’s daily lives, work, and economy.
Sugar cane plantation owners needed cheap labor after the enslaved were freed.
Sugar cane is a labor intensive crop to grow and harvest.
Sugar was a necessity enjoyed by the poorest shopgirls to the richest kings.