Who doesn't like chocolate? Although humans consume about 16 billion pounds a year of the stuff, not every chocolate lover knows its fascinating history. So let's explore that history, from a beverage considered the "food of the gods" in the New World to an inexpensive candy in North America and Europe, and beyond.
The core book, by two anthropologists, The True History of Chocolate, starts with the earliest known consumers, the Mayans, and moves to the Aztecs who used cocoa beans as currency as well as a source of a drink reserved for the elite. Europeans then transformed the drink and developed chocolate candy. When demand exceeded supply, they turned some of their colonies near the equator into chocolate plantations. Eventually enterprising chocolate lovers were determined to bring affordable chocolate to everyone, but at considerable cost to the growers and harvesters in Africa. And today's entrepreneurs are responding to a renewed interest in innovative high quality chocolate candy.
The core book, "The True History of Chocolate," contains nine chapters (with the 9th added in the 3rd edition). The first nine weeks will each follow one chapter in the core book. The tenth week will focus on the return of small-batch, high quality production of chocolate, with or without attention to the working conditions of cocoa farmers and harvesters.
Week 1: Preface, Introduction, and Chapter 1: The Tree of the Food of the Gods
Week 2: Chapter 2: The Birth of Chocolate: Mesoamerican Genesis [early use of cacao by the Classical Maya]
Week 3: Chapter 3: The Aztecs: People of the Fifth Sun [The role of cacao in the Aztec culture]
Week 4: Chapter 4: Encounter and Transformation [European conquerers try chocolate]
Week 5: Chapter 5: Chocolate Conquers Europe [Chocolate is transformed in Europe]
Week 6: Chapter 6: The Source [Solutions to growing enough cacao beans to satisfy demand in Europe]
Week 7: Chapter 7: Chocolate in the Age of Reason (and Unreason) [Food and drink practices, including drinking cocoa, follow the political and religious cleavages of 18th century Europe]
Week 8: Chapter 8: Chocolate for the Masses [The development of cheap chocolate candy in Europe and America]
Week 9: Chapter 9: The Ethics of Chocolate [Working conditions of growers and harvesters, the development of “fair trade” chocolate]
Week 10: The Return of Upscale Chocolate [Small producers take on the likes of Hershey, Nestle, Mars, and Cadbury]
The core book is “The True History of Chocolate” (3rd ed.) (2019). by anthropologists Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe, and published by Thames & Hudson of London, England (available on Amazon for $17.00 in paperback or $13.99 on Kindle).
Here is a sampling of other relevant references:
The Maya Civilization Used Chocolate as Money. by Joshua Rapp Learn. Scientific American, June 27,2018 https://www.science.org/content/article/maya-civilization-used-chocolate-money
History of Chocolate in Spain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chocolate_in_Spain
Thirty-one current chocolate statistics: https://damecacao.com/chocolate-statistics/#:~:text=With around 7.7 billion people, pounds of chocolate a year!
https://readcacao.com/history-of-chocolate-timeline/ (Information resource and detailed timeline)
Ivory Coast Supplies the World With Cocoa. Now it Wants Some for Itself. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/13/world/africa/ivory-coast-chocolate.html?searchResultPosition=20
Whoriskey, Peter and Rachel Siegel. “Cocoa’s Child Laborers: Mars, Nestlé and Hershey Pledged Nearly Two Decades Ago to Stop Using Cocoa Harvested By Children. Yet Much of the Chocolate You Buy Still Starts With Child Labor.” The Washington Post, 5 Jun. 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/business/hershey-nestle-mars-chocolate-child labor-west-africa/.
Mars Wrigley fined after two workers tumbled into chocolate tank last year. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/12/mars-wrigley-fined-workers-fall-chocolate-tank
Why is American chocolate so disgusting? You really don’t want to know. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/04/why-is-american-chocolate-so-disgusting-you-really-dont-want-to-know
Fry's Chocolate Dream: The Rise and Fall of a Chocolate Empire by Bradley, Mr John ISBN: 1492275085
https://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/276/The-Fry-Family-Chocolate-Makers
Milk Chocolate Is Better Than Dark, the End. It’s controversial candy season. Let’s do this. By Megan Garber The Atlantic 2016 https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/10/milk-chocolate-is-better-than-dark-chocolate-the-end/505511/