Chocolate, Women and Empire

A number of historians have explored the world of commodities, a vital part of global trading. The food commodities market is not unique to the modern or contemporary eras. In Classical Greece, olive oil was a major trading item, as was grain in the Roman Empire. More recently, coffee, tea, and chocolate, the subjects of Emma Robertson's Chocolate, Women and Empire, have become dietary staples and significant elements of the commodities market. The author focuses on Rowntree, the economically and socially important Quaker-owned chocolate manufacturer in York. Robertson concentrates on three stages in the production and sale of chocolate: the growing of cocoa beans in the West Indies and especially Nigeria, the manufacturing of chocolate in York, and the marketing of chocolate, again centred in Britain. Actual sales extended world-wide, especially throughout the British Empire. The author often compares Rowntree's endeavour to that of Cadbury and Fry, the other two Quaker-owned companies that played a central role in the chocolate trade from the mid-nineteenth century onwards

Ancient history · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Empire · Olive oil · Roman Empire · Sociology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Food Science · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History