Chocolate Consumption from the Sixteenth Century to the Great Chocolate Boom

The sixteenth-century Spanish conquest of Central America diffused chocolate around the world, as a hot, sweet, and mildly addictive stimulating beverage. Markets outside Europe, often neglected by historians, receive special attention in this chapter. Chocolate suffered from increasing competition from tea, coffee, and similar substances, as it became associated with Roman Catholic culture. However, chocolate spread more widely again in the Industrial Revolution. Incomes rose, punitive taxes fell, the industrial manufacture of eating chocolate lowered prices, and temperance campaigners approved of chocolate’s nutritious properties. By 1914, eating and drinking chocolate were firmly established as small luxuries of the industrial working class, while drinking chocolate retained a mass peasant clientele in parts of the world.