feel for the Aztec in European war
machines a catalyst from massive
industrial innovation a tasty treat
adored with chocoholics across the globe
it was enjoyed by powerful Emperor's on
both sides of the Atlantic and fill the
pockets of enterprising missionaries
with its roots as a spicy and fatty
drink in ancient mesoamerica how did
chocolate eventually become the guilty
pleasure of billions let's find out
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spread across the jungles of the gulf
coast of Mexico are enormous carved
stone heads these slightly chubby
versions of the Maui belonged to the
Olmecs and are nearly three thousand
years old
the Olmecs are our original chocolate
ears and we have a linguistic and
archaeological evidence linking them to
cacao cultivation at least as far back
as 1000 BC they drank it as a bitter
beverage rather than a solid sweet that
we know today how did these ancient
people turn this into their favorite
chocolaty beverage well first they would
ferment and then sundry and then roast
and Dashell the cacao beans leaving them
with something called a nib and that was
ground and melted into something that we
know was chocolate liqueur which would
have tasted a little bit like extremely
bitter dark chocolate mix that up with
some honey vanilla or even some chilies
and you've got yourself a traditional
Mexico American cacao drink they
especially love the froth that would
kind of develop on top of this drink and
would even pour it from one cup into
another from a standing height to try
and develop as much as possible on top
soon enough long distance trade routes
sprang up across the region connecting
to kale growers wicker care consumers
cacao soon found itself a central part
in Mesoamerican ceremonies especially
weddings kind of in there all that fancy
French Champagne does in our society
it was so highly valued that it was used
as currency to out to region which
eventually even inspired counterfeiters
that molded fake beans out of clay or
even curved avocado seeds and to kind of
give you an idea of how much these beans
were worth you could buy an avocado for
one bean a slave for a hundred beans and
a sweet jetski with thick frames in the
side for 7,000 beans
so every time an Olmec Mane or Aztec
drank a cup of chocolate they were
essentially drinking money like
lightness the guy on fire with a hundred
euro note after they rise to power in
the 15th century the Aztecs fell in love
with drinking chocolate but it wouldn't
grow on their highland climate so what's
a 15th century chocoholic warlord to do
invade and conquer cacao growing regions
and demand tribute obviously once
secured chocolate became a drink
reserved for the top echelons of aztec
society but the military or some of the
few commoners that are allowed to drink
it it was issued to them in wafer form
so that it could easily mix it with
water or maize grill for an instant
nutrition boost when the Spanish arrived
in the Americas they quickly they at the
main Yucatan in 1517 and Aztec Mexico in
1519 and with the help of hundreds of
thousands of native allies and old world
diseases they conquered them instead of
New Spain in their now shattered realm
the man's had introduced the Spanish to
using cacao beans as currency which they
quickly accepted but getting them to
drink it however was a bit of a
challenge
Europeans initial reactions the
chocolate was one of complete and utter
disgust my favorite example is that of
Gerolamo Ben's Oni who when he was
travelling and Central America was
repeatedly offered the drink by the
natives and every single time he would
the hematin Lee rejected calling it a
drink fit for pigs and was completely
perplexed boy the natives would walk
away from him laughing every single time
he did so this was until he ran out of
wine and was essentially forced to drink
it undiscovered till he actually loved
it and much like Ben's Oni the Spanish
conquistadors turned colonists also had
to grow to like chocolate at this point
is important to know that nearly all the
Spanish in New Spain were men so they
had to marry and rely on native women
women that would have cooked for them
and their new children traditional Aztec
and main foods this mixing will create a
brand new mestizo culture one that drank
chocolate while this society was
emergent another group of influential
soon-to-be chocolate drinkers arrived on
the scene Christian missionaries and
most importantly the Jesuits in their
work trying to convert the natives these
missionaries were plied full of
chocolate and soon realized had Luke
and might be they traded it once the new
world errs and missionaries and
merchants started Criss crossing the
Atlantic with their new chocolate habits
and gifting chocolate to their princes
and popes the European Spanish
eventually shed their apprehension and
tried the beverage until the 1590s
chocolate rarely crossed the Atlantic
but for the 1620s millions of pounds of
it were being imported into Spain and so
chocolate spread upwards from pagan to
missionary from coerced wives to
conquistador husbands all the way until
it reached the lips of kings and queens
and so while this beverage was crossing
cultural barriers the word chocolate
itself was crossing linguistic ones most
early Spanish sources called chocolate
cacahuate an Aztec word for cacao water
the Spanish eventually combined the main
word for hot which is charcoal and the
Aztec word for water which is apt
together to form chocolate which would
eventually become chocolate why exactly
what the Spanish do this well let's just
imagine why a Romance language speaker
might be a little bit uncomfortable
calling his new favorite tic brown and
frothy beverage caca wat in the 18th
century we see chocolate spreading out
of Spain first to Italy where it was
drank by the likes of Grand Duke Cosmo
deterred the Medici and here it's mixed
with jasmine sugar and ambergris which
is the intestinal secretions of a sperm
whale
the Italians proved slightly more
creative in their chocolate recipes than
the Spanish who mostly drank it the same
way the Mesoamericans did we start
seeing some passes for chocolate and
even a lasagne with chocolate and
anchovy sauce YUM back in the New World
the Jesuits will make an insane amount
of money from their cacao plantations in
1701 a shipment arrived the Cadiz a huge
crates marked chocolate for the revered
father general of the company of Jesus
dock workers found that near impossible
to lift ease Christ used in her weight
and when inspectors found chocolate bars
inside they were incredibly heavy and
only after ruining their fingers
allowing them did they notice that they
were in fact solid gold bars
coated in chocolate and what the Jesuits
were making money hand over fist and the
likes of Cosimo de Medici were enjoying
their morning chocolate
Native American populations were
plummeting less than 10% were left in
order to maintain manpower slaves have
to be imported from West Africa cacao
plantations in Brazil Ecuador and
Venezuela the rolls the mass of
Americans in the history of their own
beverage was essentially at an end but a
beginning of the 19th century chocolate
was an aristocratic drink that conjured
up images of Catholic clergy and
nobility but it arrived in the 20th
century something available to most
he'll enter Napoleon no the other
Napoleon yeah the Napoleonic Wars and
all the blockades and destabilization
that came along with them contributed to
the independence revolution that swept
Latin America and cut Europe off from
its cheap chocolate supply coffee until
you ever could still be brought in
through Asia so chocolate
paved the way for them to overtake it as
Europe's bitter caffeinated beverages of
choice the consumption and production of
chocolate the client for essentially the
only time in its history but it's during
this decline that innovators began to
tinker with chocolate in order to make
it faster to produce a more appealing to
all a dutchman by the name of Van Hooten
who unfortunately is not an L invented a
press that removed most of the fat from
cacao removing this fat or cacao butter
mainly drink easier to mix with water
soon the British company JSF Ryan stones
discovered that adding cocoa butter back
into the mix and a later stage made
chocolate that was solid moldable and
less dry this first real chocolate bar
wouldn't really be palpable to us
we'll need the Swiss to perfect this new
recipe the likes of Francois Louis
Collier and Philippe Zoo card with
revising better ways of processing
chocolate and a guy named Daniel Peter
was trying to combine boat milk and
chocolate together he was having trouble
separating the water from the milk which
was necessary in order to avoid mildew
that was until he joined forces with his
neighbor Henry Nestle who had just made
a small fortune selling powdered milk
those milk chocolate was born and then
after Rudolph Flint invented conching
a process that made chocolate which
smoother Riya rived at the modern
chocolate bar smooth milky and filled to
the brim with sugar
this new industrialized form of
chocolate quickly detron the fatty
beverage that once refreshed Emperor's
and Pope's marketing soon entered afraid
Oprah the product even more people in
1861 Richard Cadbury introduced the
world to first chocolate box and right
after he started selling heart-shaped
boxes for Valentine's Day beginning the
new inseparable relationship of
Valentine's Love and chocolate richard
Cadbury was a marketing genius he knew
he needed to sell the emotions and
ideals of chocolate rather than just
chocolate itself and if chocolate isn't
associated with the emotions and ideals
you want to sell that's fine just make
them up and market the crap out of it
cover your chocolate boxes with pictures
of girls holding kittens plaster ads
across the country with fun looking
cherub face children eating your
chocolate really focus on selling the
milk part of your milk chocolate because
chocolate is no longer an indulgence for
the rich it's actually a healthy treat
for all the family soon enough this kind
of branding was used by most chocolate
companies chocolates are being pictured
alongside alpine meadows and caring
nurses or milk maids that promise the
consumer that this product is both pure
and nurturing these images are quite
ironic when you consider the rampant
adulterations carried out by food
companies in the 19th century medical
journals from that era tested food
products sold to the public and
discovered that over half of chocolates
on sale contained ground bricks and some
even had led in their and while I
thoroughly enjoy consuming led people
back then were quite at rich even
Cadbury itself was touched by the
scandal as they were caught bulking up
their chocolate with cheap stuff like
potato starch ingeniously they used this
to their advantage though my styie
claiming that their chocolate was nearly
purest on the market the slogan even
changed to absolutely pure therefore
best chocolate was now thoroughly modern
in its final smooth sugary and delicious
form however we were lured on an 18th
century style supply chain and still
does today
you see when Chuck reproduction declined
in Latin America and all that handy free
labor just dried up when Qadri started
bombing slavery the chocolate industry
had to secure a cheap supply of cacao
for itself so what do you do if they
can't transport slaves from West Africa
to your plantations
you transport your plantations to West
Africa the Portuguese Barker carries to
the colony in South Tommy and as soon
found itself the world's largest
exporter of cacao the British colony in
modern-day Ghana soon followed suit and
was quickly joined by the Ivory Coast
those are maracas cows supply-chain was
born today the Ivory Coast and Ghana
supply runs 70% of the world's cacao and
while slavery was abolished in the
Americas by 1875 it's still present in
Tikal production in West Africa
journalistic efforts in recent years
have done an excellent job shedding some
light on this issue and especially on
the issue of child slavery this heinous
enterprise can hardly be overstated
especially with the likes of Nestle
failing to meet the standards set on
them to eliminate child slavery from
their supply chain and it is truly an
enormous stain on the reputation of the
chocolate industry there will be further
information on this subject in the
description however in recent news the
Fairtrade certification has gained
popularity and promises humane labor
practices and fair prices for farmers
and while fair trade is far from perfect
it is providing a possibly less dark
future for chocolate and those that grow
cacao it has even helped native Mayans
once again grow and manufacture their
own chocolate so the day can once again
take part in the story of the
traditional beverage so that's the
bittersweet history of chocolate it had
been an elite drink among the rainbow
feathered Mesoamericans and remain that
for the perfume of overdressed nobility
of Europe spread by filthy rich
missionaries and brought to the masses
playing genius inventors a crop that has
a dark history of slavery but now it was
a possible new future with fair trade
that could potentially improve the lives
of farmers and communities in
undeveloped regions all from a skinny
little tree called tio Brahma cacao
literally
food of the gods
I hope you enjoyed this video and please
leave your feedback in the comments down
below don't forget to check out my
source in the description because
unfortunately I can't put all the
information in the video if you'd like
to support the show there are links to a
teacher store below - thanks for
watching
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you
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