By looking at the history of tobacco and chocolate, “Sacred Gifts” by Marcy Norton, shows us the important role these commodities played in the development of modern global trade. Norton’s research into these “gifts” provides insights into contemporary issues such as inequality, environmental degradation, and social justice, making it an good read for anyone interested in understanding the impacts of globalization.
If you think about it, we have a collection of spices in our kitchens that come from all over the world. The stuff of tradition, family and good times; cloves in the ham and the smells would waft through the house. Even to this day it reminds anybody of Christmas; the cinnamon, nutmeg in the cookies. Ahh, all those things that remind us of home and holidays.
Someone could put a kind of measuring stick beside these things and, because it comes from all over the world, it has a hefty dietary carbon footprint – even for its tiny size. If I want to do my part to save the planet, do I have to each less chocolate and nutmeg and go on a “low carbon diet.”.
THAT’S NOT THE POINT
I guess they imagined that the cure for the catastrophe of global climate change was just convincing consumers to be more conscious about air travel, how much meat you eat. But, its not about the CO2 exactly. It’s about the awareness of globalization and how it is a part of our everyday lives and kitchens.
The new book called “Sacred Gifts” chronicles the grand daddies of kitchen spices; chocolate and tobacco. It is a surprising journey about taste, social patterns, cash crops and international trade; with some added turns toward murder, genocide and slavery and other extensions that you might not expect.
From magical and violent beginnings, these commodities have had an outsized influence on our tastes and the formation of global economics of stuff. We’ll see how they made it all the way to every aspect of modern Canadian cuisine.
Chocolate and tobacco stories have had a big, surprising impact on global consumption patterns and Climate change. In turn, their futures will largely be influenced by the changing weather to come.
DISCOVERY AND THE LONG SHADOWS
Consumerism has really been with us for a good long time. It shapes who we are and what we eat and drink and smoke each day. Among all the spices, herbs and drugs we take for granted today, the stories about how it all began, with chocolate and tobacco, are worth a look.
These were a couple of the very first global-level cash crop commodities. These predated further essentials like coffee, cotton, sugar, and other spices.
Chocolate and tobacco were both “discovered” and Mesoamerica in and around 1530. Actually, by the 1530s cocoa and tobacco had been in lively use across Mesoamerica for hundreds of years with trade routes extending far north of modern day Mexico well into the American plains.
The author tells us that there was an abundance of recipes. Tobacco was snorted, chewed and smoked and sent practitioners into trances or even put them “out of their minds” according to contemporary diary entries. Many chocolate recipes and concoctions were available in the markets; chocolate drinks mixed with flowers and Chili’s.
In Mesoamerica these things were deeply mixed with social practices. Chocolate was associated with romance and elevated social status. Tobacco was associated with religion and social convivence (formal and informal social gatherings). It was used in ceremonies to make deals, to break deals, and to partake in gossip sessions at the end of the workday.
The writing and diary entries at the time showed that the Spaniards did not quite understand the fascination with these substances. The records seem to show that the Spaniards resisted the tastes even though they had lots of opportunity. Chocolate and tobacco were used by the Nahuatl speaking tribes that allied with the Spaniards to attack the Aztecs (in the great battles for Tenochtitlan).
The Spaniards had a different take at first. Chocolate was menacing because it was the colour of blood. Tobacco, stunk and left people in a spell or trance, the diary entries said.
TASTES CHANGE
Historians like Marcy Norton showed us how chocolate and tobacco made their way to Europe in large quantities by the late 1500s. By the middle decades of the 1600s it was well established in trading records, ship inventories, and tax logs. According to letters and church homilies at the time, it also accumulated many fans and detractors.
Researchers established that both chocolate and tobacco were certainly the necessary precursors for other commodities that followed. The exchange patterns and consumer adoption patterns established with tobacco and chocolate were the prerequisites that paved the way for coffee and tea (cinnamon nutmeg and vanilla) mass markets that ran over Europe and the World in the following decades.
By the 1700s there are shipping records of showing that tobacco was being dropped off in ports all over the world.
THE STUFF OF LOVE AND SMOKE BREAKS
The consuming of chocolate and tobacco is associated with social practices and apparatuses. Some of this followed them to the new markets in the old world. For example, paraphernalia for both chocolate and tobacco use in Europe included fancy snuff boxes and specialised cups; reminiscent of the gear used in the markets in Tenochtitlan and other towns across Mesoamerica.
In Europe, taking tobacco involved social settings. The smoke shops saw interactions across class barriers, just like in Mesoamerica. Tobacco has long been associated with social visiting. Think of the timeless image of having a smoke break with your buddy and then the boss comes out to join you for a smoke. Well right, then it’s right back to the fields or the salt mines when you’re done. The 15th and 16th century, the European version of the smoke break was born.
By World War One this became synonymous as a break buzzer. “Smoke ‘em if you got him”
Smoking was associated with the styles of the common man. We see this right up to the 20th Century. Churchill’s cigar. The cowboy in the casual pose. Marlboro for the working man. (Apologies for the excessive male references)
Chocolate had different associations. Evidence shows that in Mesoamerica there were hundreds of recipes and regional concoctions. It was a drink mixed with flower petals, vanilla, chili, honey, and other spices. It was sometimes reserved for noble classes. It was associated with rare luxury as well as romantic intrigue.
In the Europe of the 1600s, Chocolate ended up in beverages houses – as a kind of alternative to public houses for alcohol. These were precursors to the café.
In the religious space, 16th century Europe had a spectacular amount of discussion about priests taking either chocolate or tobacco before or after mass. The Pope was involved when someone wrote him in 1577 to ask if it was okay for Catholics to drink chocolate. He famously approved of the taste but did not write down any judgements about its suitability for religious people. This caused opinions to linger for decades.
It is telling that the export or global use of chocolate is still associated with something of a rare treat and refinement and also for romantic occasions like Valentine’s Day.
As John Milton* put it, “biomechanically, love is just like eating large amounts of chocolate”. (*this is not a real Milton quote)
THE STUFF OF MERCANTILISM
There will never be enough to say about the lengths that mercantile systems will go to establish and maintain control of commodities.
Through the couple of centuries after the late 1500’s, generations of chocolate and tobacco planters sprang up all over the world along with the associated human rights tragedies, horrid working conditions, war and profiteering and the rest.
Both crops were on the move. There were adaptations, new strands, new growing locations, all this shaped by giant mercantile interests. Chocolate cultivation for its part moved from the equatorial regions of Mesoamerica toward the equatorial regions of West Africa. The drivers for this were preferred labour conditions and local climate.
Tobacco strains continued to be cultivated in Mesoamerica and then in new locations like Virginia and Cuba with improvements being made in packaging and taste. These were taken to the ever-broadening markets in America and Europe and then, literally, around the world to places like China and India and West Africa by the mid1700s.
Financially, this distilled into an enduring North South pattern. In the South, hundreds of thousands of small and haphazardly organized farmers are set up to grow and sell to massive global conglomerates that have their head offices in the North. The South supplies labour and land; the North manages inventories, distribution and branding.
NOTE Everyday things can seem surprising given the history. There are the terms: French roast coffee, Swiss chocolate, Belgian chocolate, Italian and even German chocolate. None of these places grow any chocolate or any coffee!!
NUTMEG NEXT TO THE ALL SPICE
The picture emerges; billions of dollars of trade networks, and huge brand names (owned in the North), pulling raw materials from hundreds of thousands of small-scale farmers (in the South).
This north-south dynamic to the global trade of chocolate and tobacco is replicated many times over for the world of other commodities that make their way to modern Canadian kitchens. This pattern of moving and adjusting strains occurred in other products like cinnamon and nutmeg (moving from Indonesia to India and Guatemala) and coffee (from East Africa to South America and The Pacific). There are others: cloves. cardamom. vanilla, ginger, saffron, black pepper, turmeric. These started out in one place, and over the years, the plantations sprung up somewhere else in the global south and the head office spang up in the Global north.
STUFF AND THE WEATHER
There are a couple of intersections with climate.
First, surprisingly, and maybe poetically, cacao cultivation is under threat from climate change. According to the IPCC , the anticipated reduction in arable land in parts of West Africa will impact chocolate. By 2050, one IPCC report says, rising temperatures will push the suitable cacao cultivation areas uphill. The IPCC reported that Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana’s optimal altitude for cacao cultivation is expected to rise from 350–800 feet (100–250 meters) to 1,500–1,600 feet (450–500 meters) above sea level.
In fact, Läderach and the report coauthors found that, of the 294 locations examined in the study, only 10.5% showed increasing suitability for cacao production; the remaining 89.5% were likely to become less suitable by 2050.
Cacao plants need certain elevations and grows best within certain latitudes and the option are diminishing with global warming and changing precipitation.
The future of Nutmeg and cinnamon and coffee are also projected to enter an era of transitions and of uncertain supply and pricing.
LONG SHADOWS
The story of commodities castes a long shadow. In our world to do with our tastes, how we relate to each other and ultimately with international trade, are all influenced by the patterns established centuries ago.
A look into the stories of a couple of our favourite items can tell us a lot about how some of the commodity stuff works.
For now, enjoy the wafts of nutmeg and cloves and coffee.
Some quick closing advice: buy fair trade whenever you can; keep the smoking to a minimum… even with your friends.
Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World, by Macey Norton, Cornell University Press, 2010
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway Bloomsbury Publishing plc 2010
