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The Unsettling History of Chocolate Economics
And how one tiny African country is changing the whole game
The first case of cocoa beans being processed for human consumption comes from the Olmec civilizations of Mesoamerica 4,000 years ago. It wasn’t just a food item, but also used as money, and for spiritual ceremonies for the Mayans and Aztecs. They literally thought this currency was sacred.
Unfortunately for them, the Spanish Conquistadors arrived in 1518. Since they were heathens/non “believers,” their civilization got burnt down and enslaved.
It was explicitly a conquest done with Abrahamic-supremacist motivations over the earth-revering “pagans,” sanctioned first and foremost by Pope Julius II.
In a funny side effect of this mass civilizational extermination, some cocoa beans got sent to the royal family of Spain, who grew to like the originally bitter recipe over several generations. After liberally sweetening it with sugarcane syrup and honey, their recipe got leaked.
The masses of Europe were hooked. The only problem was that cocoa didn’t grow very well in the depressingly cloudy Northern Hemisphere, and no one wanted to toil on the farms in their stolen lands in the Global South.
