Chocolate Consumption

As both James and Joseph have noted this is our first commodities text that not only places the commodity as the center of the narrative but also the Coes also discuss chocolate in terms of its spread throughout the marketplace.  The True History of Chocolate was the one of the text in Robbins’ critique that appeared to be the one for which he had the most disdain.  While I do perceive the Coes’ work as one with a more positive narrative bent than Mintz’s Sweetness and Power, I did not perceive chocolate as being the ‘hero’ of the text as Robbins’ claimed during his critique.

Instead, as James hinted at, the True History of Chocolate instead appears to focus on “Chocolate [] becoming democratized.” (Coe & Coe, 166) That is to say, the book is not a treatise on the goods of capitalism as Robbins’ initially claimed, but rather an examination of how chocolate spread through the world and trickled down from the palettes of the elites who could afford it to the everyday worker and in the process the consumption habits changed to reflect its change in status from a luxury good to a candy bar.  This consumption is not limited simply to the food market but also discussions are made as to chocolate’s medicinal values and concessions are made to include the evolving nature of chocolate as a way to balance either “hot” or “cold” constitutions, even examining differences between how the English and Spanish perceived the drink despite agreement between “contemporaries in England and on the Continent, that chocolate was an aphrodisiac.” (Coe & Coe, 173)