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CACAO/CHOCOLATE ORIGINS

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  Mesoamerican by origin and mystical by reputation, cacao—the raw material that produces chocolate and cocoa—comes from the fruit of finicky little trees with shallow roots that, like prima donnas, only grow within twenty degrees north and south of the equator and demand warmth, humidity, and shade. Only three out of a thousand of their flowers, pollinated by small flies, will yield pods containing thirty to forty seeds. No one really knows how or why pre-classic period Olmecs decided to crack open, ferment, roast, winnow, then ground and blend the bitter raw seeds that exact the cacao delicacy that became chocolate. Evidence indicates that the invention of chocolate appeared to have been a “happy accident” of a Olmec brewing process dating as early as 1900 BCE, a method that spread and became a central feature in subsequent Mesoamerica cultures. While too finicky to cultivate to act as a dietary staple like maize, the religious belief system of the Maya civilization (250–900 CE) deif
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CHOCOLATE ENCOUNTERS: MEXICAS AND SPANIARDS

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  The popularity of chocolate’s symbolic and practical uses spread throughout Mesoamerica into the Post-Classic era of the Aztec Triple Alliance and the early sixteenth-century Spanish conquest. The two-way process of colonization gave rise to an important cultural exchange between the New World and the Old World that included the acquisition of new tastes, including chocolate. Spanish victors in Mexico acquired a taste for the chocolate-drinking habit of the Mesoamerican vanquished and needed a discourse to explain their new craving .  In order to justify consuming a food of the uncivilized, the Europeans appropriated Mesoamerica’s pre-existing use of chocolate as a medicine.    The medicinal use and healing power of chocolate was passed down from the Maya to the Aztecs. Based on a spiritual belief that sickness was God’s punishment, Mesoamerican medical practitioners used supernatural means like astrology to interpret an affliction, and pathological treatment using plants, including
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CHOCOLATE IN COLONIAL TIMES: CONSUMPTION

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  Like the Aztecs, Europeans embraced chocolate and its aura of exotic luxury as a marker of wealth and power, and served it in courts, royal palaces, and chocolate rooms in mansions. The pleasurable indulgence of chocolate called for accoutrements to match its status. Europeans claimed ownership over chocolate by upgrading utensils, creating art that depicted Europeans consuming chocolate, and inventing new recipes for chocolate that were shared as gifts or put into cookbooks.    Hard to make and often messy to drink, chocolate preparation called for an upgrade to the utensils and serving pieces to make them presentable to European society. To replace Mesoamericans’ splashy cup-to-cup pouring method of frothing chocolate, sixteenth-century Spaniards invented the  molinillo , a wooden utensil that, placed in a chocolate drink, produced froth by rubbing the whisk between the palms. The French took high-end preparation a step further with the  chocolatière , a seventeenth-century chocola
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CACAO IN COLONIAL TIMES: PRODUCTION

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  Beginning in the seventeenth century, a growing taste for chocolate across Europe created an increase in demand for cacao. The promise of high profits sparked imperial contests for control. Based on the European economic system of mercantilism, the Spanish, British, French, Dutch, and Portuguese Empires expanded cacao cultivation into areas surrounding the Equatorial region under colonial domain in the Americas. Each empire began to organize cacao cultivation in order to serve the European demand for Latin America’s first cash crop. The evolution of cacao production and labor arrangements in Brazil present a case study for understanding the shift of cacao practices throughout colonial Latin America and the Caribbean.   The nature of cacao production made it labor intensive. Jesuit missionaries used Natives to engage in small-scale systematic production of cacao in Brazil during the sixteenth century. The missionaries, motivated by the nutritional and medicinal properties of cacao coe
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CHOCOLATE FACTORY: TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

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  From the classic period into the mid-eighteenth century, people consumed chocolate as a beverage made from coarsely ground cacao beans and spices—strong, thick, bitter, loaded with fat, and difficult to digest. Manual preparation on a small scale with simple devices made late eighteenth-century chocolate factories resemble little more than overgrown apothecary shops. Then, in 1795 during the midst of the Industrial Revolution, chocolatier Joseph Storrs Fry brought a Watt steam engine into his factory to grind cacao beans, introducing mechanical techniques to the cocoa business. Thereon, inventive men with creative, scientific ideas began to change the taste, quality, quantity, and method of chocolate-making initiated by the Maya thousands of years ago. Streamlined production lowered the cost, while diversification expanded the market. Technological innovations in chocolate processing and diversification between 1828 and 1879 set in motion a chain of events that resulted in modern cho
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CACAO IN MODERN TIMES: PRODUCTION

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  Modern technology and diversification inspired by the Industrial Revolution drove chocolate consumption up, and with it a high demand for raw cacao. However, independence in Latin America curtailed main producing regions and forced chocolate producers to seek alternative cacao sources. Cadbury, one of the main chocolate companies to benefit from technological modernization, began purchasing its cacao from Africa. Demands of modernization for cheap cacao from outside sources created a moral and political dilemma for chocolate companies like Cadbury.   When Brazil achieved independence from Portugal in 1822, the Portuguese simply brought cacao seedlings and their slave-labor, large-plantation model of production to Sao Tome and Principe, Portuguese colonies off the West Coast of Africa, and resumed business. The abolishment of slavery in Portuguese colonies in 1869 forced plantation owners to redefine labor recruitment as a new model they called “contract labor” to assuage European imp
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CHOCOLATE IN MODERN TIMES: CONSUMPTION

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  Technological innovations in chocolate production during the Industrial Revolution increased supply and created diversification leading to an explosive growth in chocolate consumption. As consumption spread to the industrial working class, chocolate moved away from its distinctive role as a tasty luxury for the elite and began to assume a new social identity as a treat for the masses. More chocolate and consumers meant a rise in competition among manufacturers to capture market share. Chocolate companies sought advertising vehicles to separate their brand from the competition, drive sales, and attach to chocolate’s new social identity. The nineteenth-century World’s Fairs spotlighted technological advances—a natural coupling for branding chocolate, the “new” food available to the masses as a result of technology. Chocolate manufacturers used the World’s Fairs of the nineteenth and early twentieth century as an advertising and marketing strategy for branding and globalizing the new so
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