Marcy Norton received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2000. She is currently assistant professor of history at the George Washington University. She is completing a book entitled Tobacco and Chocolate: From Sacred Goods to Secular Commodities.
Search for other works by this author on:OAH Magazine of History, Volume 18, Issue 3, April 2004, Pages 14–17, https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/18.3.14
01 April 2004Marcy Norton, Conquests of Chocolate, OAH Magazine of History, Volume 18, Issue 3, April 2004, Pages 14–17, https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/18.3.14
Navbar Search Filter Mobile Enter search term Search Navbar Search Filter Enter search term SearchChocolate—along with tomatoes, potatoes, maize, and tobacco— originated in the Americas. How did chocolate make its way to Europeans and Europe? One might think that Europeans knew a good thing when they saw it, and immediately began exporting chocolate to savor in the “Old World.” Or maybe Europeans found chocolate overly bitter and strange-tasting and so thought to sweeten it with sugar and Old World spices and make it “European.” Both of these answers are wrong.
Europeans neither found chocolate instantly tantalizing nor did they begin to experiment with Indian chocolate recipes to suit their palates right away. To understand how Europeans developed a taste for chocolate and integrated it into their culture requires understanding something about Mesoamerica, Spanish colonialism, and their interactions. Liking chocolate required learning to like chocolate. And in learning to like the Indian taste of chocolate, Europeans also absorbed several important Indian ideas about chocolate.