Access The True History Of Chocolate Composed By Sophie D. Coe Provided As Digital

the forward to this book, the author lets us know that he wrote this book at the request of his wife who tragically became ill with cancer and died after having done extensive research for it.

It explains to us the new world origins of chocolate and how the Maya and Aztecs enjoyed italways in drink form and never with sugar, We learn how the Spaniards brought it to Europe and how it traveled from there, We are also told how chocolate use fit into the medical and religious theories of the day and how the use of it evolved into what we know today.

I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone interested in learning in depth about this subjectnot for lightweights, Read for February book club theme: chocolate! This was a serious history book, and a little above my pay grade in parts, but still an intriguing, new genre for me to read.
One of my favorite parts of the book was the possible etymology of the word chocolate, Traditionally, the Aztec word cacahuatl was very close to the Spanish word caca meaning feces, Quote: “It is hard to believe that the Spanish were NOT thoroughly uncomfortable with a noun beginning with caca to describe a thick, darkbrown drink which they had begun to appreciate.
They desperately needed some other word, . . and came up with chocolatl and chocolate, ” I found it interesting that chocolate through the ages was mostly a drink, and only in the last century or so became a solid, edible treat, I also enjoyed the history of the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania I have spent quite a bit of time there and have toured all the Hershey properties and Chocolate World.
The sections on high quality and Fair Trade chocolate were also enlightening and I will definitely be looking for a bar of Valrhona chocolate on my next shopping trip to Trader Joes! Chocolate! Drink/food of the gods indeed! ENLIGHTENING AND SWEET

The book is fascinating because it shows how the European colonizers recuperated a typical MesoAmerican agricultural and culinary invention and imported it into Europe.


Cocoa is produced from the seeds of a tree that grows in tropical areas in South and MesoAmerica, In fact, the plant several different species of it grows in the Amazon valley up to Bolivia and Ecuador, in Brazil and along the Gulf of Mexicos coast of South America.
The Spanish, when they conquered and colonized Central America, discovered it among the Aztecs and the Mayas, They did not like it at first, but they got addicted very fast, And addicted is the proper word,

The book alludes to several crops that were turned into greatly profitable businesses by the Spaniards who established a full monopoly to the only profit of the Spanish state, and thus Spain had the monopoly in Europe at least for some time.
The other crops were tobacco, maize it took a lot more time to really develop in Europe, potatoes many different types all arriving in Europe in the second half of theth century, and various vegetables tomatoes, squash of all types, beans of many types, peppers, chili peppers, etc.
, let alone the famous turkey which is not a vegetable of any sort,

Chocolate is slightly different and yet the same, in a way, Like maize, the fruit of the cocoatree cannot shed its seeds all by itself, In nature, it is helped by monkeys who break the shell because they are appealed by the soft and sweet padding inside the shell in which the seeds are embedded.
Human beings were appealed by the seeds, To be able to transform them into anything edible a long process is to be followed to collect the seeds at the proper time, to dry them, to roast them, to winnow them, to grind them and then to prepare the powder with water to turn it into a drink.
Many spices are used for flavoring, It was thus the same as it was with tobacco, The growing of cocoa trees is easier since there is little to do, except clearing around the trees in the forest so that they can grow unhampered, or plant it in a cleared area and then take care of it, which is not very difficult.
The domesticated tree is quite autonomous, Yet there are two main species, the Criolla species that can have diseases and is thus more delicate, The taste is better with this species, but it produces less than the other, The second species, the Forastero species, grows wild easily, is a lot more productive than the first species but the quality of the cocoa produced from its beans is less refined.


The authors follow the history of cocoa after the arrival of the Spaniards in Mesoamerica, and that leads them to know the second species, where it grows wild, etc.
They do not wonder about this fact and thus the possibility to have had cocoa, chocolate south of Maya country, in tropical South America, In, they could not know what was discovered by archeology very recently, An important study was published on October,, in the journal Nature, “The use and domestication of Theobroma cocoa during the midHolocene in the Upper Amazon, ” This study proves archaeologically that in the Upper Amazon, someyears ago, nearlyyears older than all other proven occurrences in MesoAmerica, hence a long time before the Maya or the Olmec who were considered as the inventors of chocolate up to this publication.
The study does not draw an essential consequence of this discovery since they could not know it then, Cultural phenomena do not move back in time, That means that the production of cocoa moved north and not south as is often considered for American Indians who are seen as moving from north to south.
That leads to the idea that there must have been a demographic, economic and cultural migration that moved from the south to the north, in fact

to mesoAmerica.
If such is the case it becomes quite obvious that the great stone builders of the Indian civilizations of South America and mesoAmerica moved from the south to the north.
Now when did they arrive in South America and where did they come from

Cocoa is thus a lot more important than it appears at first.
It is the key to a phenomenon that has been so far vastly neglected, Actually, the authors of the book assume that the invention is the Mayas or the Olmecs, But that is not the case, Inthey could not know, and now we have to clearly state this new development,

The book is all the same unimaginably interesting about the history of this chocolate when it left mesoAmerica and moved to Europe, along with coffee, tobacco, and tea.
Note tea is from Asia of course, but it is essential in the whole story: Coffee reached England in, chocolate in, and Tea in, Strangely enough, Europe got cut up into two halves, The Catholic south and its aristocratic “good society” real aristocrats and their imitators that adopted chocolate in spite of all preaching against it, at least in the upper classes, whereas in the Protestant north coffee was the trendy drink in the entrepreneurial middle class, known as the bourgeoisie.
In this northern half though there was a lot of noise against coffee, including a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach and the argument between a father and his daughter, the daughter being addicted to coffee and the father considering this as a bad habit.


Strangely enough, the book does not consider the special case of England that adopted tea as both an aristocratic and popular drink, hence a universal drink, whereas coffee and chocolate remained marginal.
In fact, this is the result of the monopolies given to some English Tea companies that were in fact at the very origin of the American rebellion that led to the Independence of thecolonies and the creation of the USA, after the famous Boston Tea Party.
That could have also shown that in Virginia John Rolfe had to marry Pocahontas to learn from her how to grow and cure tobacco, thus producing the famous Virginia tobacco inand this John Rolfe and his son Thomas Rolfe got the monopoly of growing and processing tobacco for the English market at first and then Europe, and they had to fight against the monopoly the Spaniards had had so far in Europe.
Thats one point that is not clarified enough in this book, It remains within the case of chocolate and cocoa, but it would have been interesting to go into commercial details there,

One point the book is very clear about is the extermination, quasiextermination, in one word the genocide, of Native Americans in the hands of Europeans.
In the case of cocoa, we are dealing with the Spaniards and the Portuguese, Both in total alliance with the French and the Dutch replaced the Indians with African slaves, The book though does not mention the difference in treatment on the Catholic French, Portuguese, and Spanish side on one hand, and the Protestant English side on the other hand.
They are ironic about how the Spanish were strict about marital duties for the slaves, But that is very different from what happened to women slaves up north, Down south, under French or Spanish or Portuguese rules all slaves must be Christianized and married, which enabled all the Indian women who were not able to find Indian men since they were systematically killed by the Spaniards or the Portuguese at conquest time, to be married and thus have some marital life, and this marital life of slaves was protected and guaranteed by the Spanish crown, by the Inquisition and by the Catholic church on the Iberic side, and by the Code Noir on the French side French crown and French Catholic church.


The history of chocolate in Europe and a little bit in the world is followed century after century, from the drink to the chocolate bar in theth century.
True enough, chocolate is not very present in theth and earlyth centuries in European culture, yet Tchaikovsky could have been quoted with his Nutcracker, There was some move towards hard chocolate to be eaten and not drunk between the two world wars, but it is only after the second world war that the chocolate bar became an addiction in western societies, European societies particularly.
The Swiss invention of milk chocolate was one essential development for this chocolate revolution that has ruined the teeth of several generations of Europeans due to the sweet tooth syndrome advertising has developed in them.


Of course, what is missing is the cinema and television in this approach, That made chocolate the most popular sweet you can invent for all celebrations or even for no celebrations at all, Christmas and chocolate are a must, Easter and chocolate are an obligation, A drugstore without some chocolate drink is impossible, And television is the cave of the forty chocolate thieves, Any kid imagines he or she is the Ali Baba or the Nina Baba who will raid the cave, And pirates are bringing in more chocolate than gold, as is well known, So, widen the book beyond its copyright date and then you can have the following films, Like Water for Chocolate. Chocolat One taste is all it takes, Merci pour le Chocolat. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Romantics Anonymous. Menier and Banania were the two heroes of thes for all children, especially since it was a treat that they could not enjoy that mush, After school the afternoon snack might have been a slice of bread cut off the big fat loaf, most of the time one day old, with some margarine on top, sprinkled with some Banania powder chocolate, I just said some and it meant not much.
But the dream is in the eyes of the beholder, not on the slice of bread,

This childish or childlike side of chocolate is absent from the book, unluckily, Chocolate today is not an adult drink or candy, Grownups have coffee if they want something, or tea if they are not particular about their exciting caffeine drinks, but chocolate is for kids and kids like it.
Now you can see the tremendous change between chocolate, the drink of the Maya, Olmec, Toltec or Aztec lords, with the possibility for a war prisoner to get a cup of it before the final moment of the sacrifice, and chocolate, the drink or the treat of kids in our modern world.
Have we lost something, or have we gained something These are two of the several sides of the question,

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
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