The Spanish Conquest
Christopher Columbus first encountered the cacao bean on his fourth mission to the Americas on August 15, 1502. His crew seized a large native canoe that contained cacao beans as well as other trade goods. His son Ferdinand who travelled with him commented that the natives valued the beans greatly. He termed them almonds due to their shape. Columbus took cacao beans with him back to Spain, but the Spanish did not know how to process the beans into chocolate yet, so they made no impact.
Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés may have been the first European to encounter chocolate when he observed it in the court of Montezuma in 1519. The first record of chocolate in Europe dates to 1531. Shortly afterwards José de Acosta, a Spanish Jesuit missionary, described the use of chocolate among the Indians and early Spanish colonisers:
“Loathsome to such as are not acquainted with it, having a scum or froth that is very unpleasant taste. Yet it is a drink very much esteemed among the Indians, wherewith they feast noble men who pass through their country. The Spaniards, both men and women that are accustomed to the country are very greedy of this chocolate. They say they make diverse sorts of it, some hot, some cold, and some temperate, and put therein much of that “chili”; yea, they make paste thereof, the which they say is good for the stomach and against the catarrh. “
José de Acosta’s book Historia Natural also contains the first known record of the word “chocolate”.
The Spread Throughout Europe
Chocolate was first introduced to Europe by Spanish friars. In the beginning, Spaniards would use it as a medicine to treat illnesses such as abdominal pain because it had a bitterness to it. However they quickly realised that it was more palatable once sugar was added, and it quickly became a court favourite. It was still served as a beverage, but the addition of sugar or honey counteracted the natural bitterness. The Spaniards initially intended to recreate the original taste of the Mesoamerican chocolate by adding similar spices, but this habit had faded away by the end of the eighteenth century. By 1602, chocolate had made its way from Spain to Austria, then over about a hundred years it established a foothold throughout Europe . By 1662 chocolate consumption had become so widespread that Pope Alexander VII had to rule on whether drinking chocolate was a breach of religious fasts. Since it was a drink he decided it was permitted!
Early European preparation of chocolate was usually a grand event, which was limited to the wealthy. In addition to having pots dedicated solely to chocolate beverages, special cups and saucers were often used. Europeans were the first to add milk to chocolate. It is worth noting that chocolate was the first source of caffeine to reach Europe, beating out coffee and tea by a few years. There may not be much caffeine in there, but when you’ve never been exposed to it before, even a little can be quite exciting.
The first English encounters with cocoa beans were when English privateers preyed on Spanish ships in the late 16th Century. For example in 1579 an English captain burnt a shipload of them, apparently thinking they were sheep droppings! It would not be until 1655, when the English took Jamaica and its cacao plantations from the Spanish that the habit of drinking chocolate would take hold in this country. High import duties on the beans meant that it was only available to the very affluent. Those who could afford it drunk it at the fashionable coffee houses of the day, including dedicated chocolate houses, the first of which opened in 1657 on Bishopsgate Street.
The desire for chocolate created a thriving slave market, as between the early 17th and late 19th centuries the laborious and slow processing of the cacao bean was manual. Cacao plantations spread, as the English, Dutch, and French colonized and planted. With the depletion of Mesoamerican workers, largely to disease, cocoa beans production was often the work of poor wage laborers and enslaved Africans. In the early 19th century the Portuguese began transplanting cuttings of cacao trees to their colonies in Africa. The first successful transplantation to Africa was in 1822 on the island of Sao Tome. By the early 20th century cacao plantations were widely established in Nigeria, the Gold Cost and the Ivory Coast. The British carried chocolate to their colonies in the Far East, such as Ceylon (Sri Lanka), while the Dutch carried it to Java and Sumatra and the Spanish to the Philippines.
