True History of Chocolate

As Eric alluded to in his own post, this book does not appear to describe chocolate as a kind of "character" in and of itself. The Coe's primary focus seems to be, as was described Robbins, the history of chocolate rather than the life that it created outside itself. The Coes go into great detail describing recipes for chocolate, how it was perceived by those who consumed it, and how it ultimately found its way into the mouths of everyone in the western world. Unlike Mintz, with his descriptions of sugar, the Coes do not describe any apparent upheaval or conquest that occurred because of chocolate (although conquest did lead into its discovery).

That said, the Coes do give us some tools to figure out why does didn't occur, as well as (perhaps more importantly) why exploitation due to chocolate has only began to occur fairly recently. One recent might be because cocoa wasn't the big cash cow that sugar was, and only exported a fairly small amount. Maybe ways to harvest cocoa were already imbued in the population, so the need for slavery might have been lessened (but that is up for debate.) Or perhaps, when it finally did become big as a treat in Europe, chocolate manufacture fell to relatively moral families, as the Coes note on page 242. There are not too many mentions of the mercantile sharks that Mintz was fond of speaking of, although their lack of appearance can be given to either one of the preceding points.  

One question I would like to put forth is whether or not we can consider chocolate as a commodity or not. Certainly, it has been redefined over the course of history, but only a few times. It largely retained its status as a status drink and only changed when it became available to the common man. It also remained removed from social practices meaning that it has less "social potential." In places like England, dishonesty among chocolate traders might have helped to place tea as the national drink rather than chocolate, as seen on page 245. The only mentions of chocolate as a truly social force is seen at the very end of the book. James's post implies a deeper level, but I hesitate to say that chocolate was an active actor that shaped social life rather than a passive actor that simply reflected it. In other words, chocolate did not democratize England; it spread because England was already democratized.

As an interesting side note, the Marxian definition of a commodity seems to have some validity in today's chocolate trade; described partly as a "worker being separated from his work. If you want to to see what I mean, check the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEN4hcZutO0