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If a person fatigued with long and hard labor, or with a violent agitation of the mind, takes a good dish of chocolat. You shall perceive almost instantly that his faintness shall cease and his strength shall be recovered. So that, Dominic, was written by a monsieur de Kélu, who, as you're probably able to tell, was a Frenchman. Was he? He was writing in the early 18th century, and that was translated into English in 1724. It is from the Natural History of Chocolate. I You may be wondering what qualified Monsieur de Kélou to a pint on the subject of chocolate. It was because he had actually spent time out in the Caribbean, in the French West Indies, where he had been utterly converted to the notion that chocolate was not only tasty, but good for you.

I completely agree with them, Tom.

But you will find a very shocking French opinion coming up. Because in the opinion of Monsieur de Kélou, he said that one ounce of chocolate contains as much nourishment as a pound of beef.

An ounce of chocolate? Yeah. I'd want more than an ounce.

One ounce of chocolate. I mean, as an Englishman, a proud Englishman. Yeah, absolutely. Would you agree with that, that chocolate outweighs beef?

I suppose you could have them both, couldn't you? If you had a Mexican mole, like a beef mole with a chocolate sauce.

I guess you could. Anyway, so to continue why Monsieur de Kélu was so enthusiastic by chocolate. It is a dish so cheap as not to come above a penny. If tradesmen and artisans were once aware of it, there are few who would not take the advantage of so easy a method of breakfasting. Breakfast. So agreeably. Yeah, breakfasting. At so small a charge and to be well supported till dinner time without taking any other sustenance, solid or liquid.

I love hearing how Mr. De I loospoke. I think that's a real treat for the listeners.

We were all about the authenticity. So there you have him promoting chocolate as the ultimate breakfast food. Yes. It's so sustaining that it will keep you going right the way up to supper. But he also recommends it as a medicine and suggests really to enhance the medicinal effects that you should add powders of millipede, vapors, earthworms, and the livers and goals of eels.

The goal of an eel. I'd love the goal of an eel. Why haven't people made that in chocolate form?

I love chocolate, but I've never had millipede or vipers or earthworms or the livers and goals of eels with it. But maybe-Yeah, one day Tom. Maybe some retro chocolate brand.

Well, if any of them were a retro chocolate brand, who would do that? Now Tom, we do love chocolate and the rest is history. We are thrilled, aren't we? We're absolutely thrilled that we're able to do this episode in partnership with our friends at Cadbury. Because do you know what, Tom? It's their 200th anniversary this year.

Dominic, very important to emphasize that it is Cadbury and not Cadbury's. As I had always thought.

Well, Theo, our producer, foolishly, always calls it Cadbury's. He's quite wrong, Tom. I know. He couldn't be wronger.

He probably goes around talking about Boots, the chemist, rather than Boot, the chemist, as we all know it.

Exactly, we all know it's Boot.

Dominic, so chocolate. Yes. An amazing substance, but also an amazing history, right?

A very rich, a very rich history. Rich.

Rich and creamy.

Rich and creamy history, Tom. I thought what we would do, because we have actually talked about doing a history of chocolate since about episode 20 of this podcast. Yeah, we have. So I thought what we would do is in the first half, we talk about the deep history of chocolate. So the Olmecs, the Maya, the Aztecs, the Spaniards.

Because we haven't talked about that for at least two months.

Yes. And then in the second half, Chocolate, Tom, there is no better window than a chocolate window into the story of modernity, industrialisation, and Victoria in Britain.

That is so Sam Rock. So where are we beginning?

I think we should begin with the Olmecs. So our listeners may know the Olmecs as the fellows who made enormous heads, didn't they? Stone heads. Yes. In Mesoamerica.

And they almost look African, don't they? People who are into Atlantis were very excited about these. They were indeed. Obviously, they're not African. No. They're absolutely Olmec. Very impressive, aren't it? You must have seen them in the museum in Mexico.

In Mexico City, the Anthropology Museum.

They're brilliant. Enormous cuboid, exuding this incredible sense of power.

Again, an Olmec head made of chocolate, Tom, would be a super thing. That would keep you going. So they seem to have believed that Coco, so they were grinding cocoa beans, which are obviously native to Mesoamerica.

And which looked like sheep sheep, correct?

Correct, because when the English privateers later on found them, they would throw them into the sea, as we will discover. So the Olmex, if you're interested in the Olmex, there's a brilliant book for younger readers, actually, which talks about the Olmex civilization at the beginning. Is that? Called Eventually, the Fall of the Aztecs. But anyway, that's by the by. I just recommend that to the listeners. The Olmex were the people who invented that bonkers ball game where you'd hit the ball with your hips. And if you lost, you'd be killed. Exactly, you'd be sacrificed. Some archeologists think that when you lost this ball game, you had bad hips, you lost the ball game, you were sacrificed, there was somehow cocoa or chocolate drinking at this moment. There were crushed cocoa beans that they have found with the bodies of the sacrificial victims.

But not like you play a game of football or cricket and then go and have a pint. You wouldn't come off the ball caught. Have a glass of chocolate? Have a Bournville.

No, I don't think so. I think they thought it was sacral. I think they thought it was sacral, yeah. I mean, so much of this is supposition. So the Olmec is about 1,500 BC, aren't they? And then they seem to have passed, A, the ball game, and B, the tradition of grinding the cocoa beans and making this bitter chocolatey drink.

Because it is bitter at this point, isn't it? It is. That's the key thing. So we're not talking.

They're not flavoring it with sugar, for example. So they seem to have passed that to the Maya. And the sense we have from what fragments of Maya history we have is that they would drink this chocolate in ritual celebrations and at peace treaties. Would it be social?

Like you say, Have a Sherry, you'd say Have a Sherry. Chocolate?

Yes, I think that's probably right.

Oh, lovely.

Thank you. Then the Aztecs, the mexican, as I believe you would call them, Tom. Yes, I would. They were definitely well into their chocolate. So the sense we have is that they would have it in the market, the internautic land, in the great suburban market they have there. There are lots of cacao beans.

And would this be brought as a tribute?

Yes, I think they are bringing it as tribute. And what is more, they may well have used the beans as barter because, of course, they didn't have a currency. It's one of the things the Spaniards noticed. They're very convenient, aren't they? Yeah, they're a big pile of beans. There's some beans. Even more convenient than gold.

Yeah. Which, of course, is what the Spanish have come for.

The Spanish have come for gold? Anyway, we don't want to do the fall of the Aztec skin, Tom.

No, but I'm just wondering, when the Spanish arrive, do they pick up on the fact that actually these weird beans are incredibly valuable, or are they initially not interested in them?

No, I don't think they are interested in them because, of course, they wouldn't seem valuable. They may think, Well, these people use the beans, but it's not like they're excited about the beans and swapping them among themselves or anything like that.

And again, are the beans, are they purely for drink? You will need them. Again, is there a sacral dimension to it?

It's so hard to say. That's a really good question. So depending who you read, there are some accounts, Cortés, for example, goes to stay with Montezuma. We did a thousand episodes on this in 1519. And is Montezuma giving him hot chocolate to drink? Some historians, when they paint the scene- That's a weird idea. They have them drinking hot chocolate together. But if it has this, as you say, sacral significance, which has been passed down over, frankly, thousands of years, is it plausible that they're just sitting around, Pedro Alvarado in his gilet, quaffing- Oh, bloody good chocolate. God, mugs of chocolate. I don't know. And I think we can't possibly know, because so much of this we are seeing in a very refracted way. Anyway, Tom, to hammer this home, there is religious, there is a ritual dimension. And in fact, actually, I should have mentioned this already. I know you love a friar, don't you? I love a friar. We love a lot of accounts from friars. So there's a Franciscan friar called Toribio de Benevente. And he says, he went to our old friends, the Tlascalans, so the great rival of Tenochto and Mexico City.

And he says that on the Feast of All souls in the Indian towns, many offerings are made for the dead. Some are for corn, others are blankets, others are food, bread, chickens, and in place of wine, they offer chocolate. So there's two sides to that, I guess. One is that it's in place of wine, which would suggest it's a social drink. But the other is that it also plays a part in a religious- Well, unless, I mean, wine plays a religious role in Christianity, perhaps there's an echo there.

But obviously, chocolate doesn't have any sacral connotations for the Spanish. No. And so how long does it take them to work out that they're worth having?

Well, we know when the first instance of them bringing it back to Spain is, the first recorded instance, I should say, maybe they've done it beforehand. But we have a source that says it's 1544. So what's that? A quarter of a century after the Spanish had first pitched up in Mexico, and they present a gift of cacao seeds to King Philip II. He's a very gloomy man, isn't he, Philip II? I don't see him as a chocolate man at all.

Hanging out in the Escurrial.

In the Escarriol, exactly. Now, historians think if this probably wasn't the very first time, they might have been, priests might have brought about merchants and so on.

Well, I guess it would be like old India hands, bringing back a taste of a curry. So maybe old Mexico hands, meet up in Madrid for chocolate.

The issue they have with chocolate, of course, is that it is... It's important to stress this point. It's very bitter. The ground up stuff.

But it's giving you a caffeine hit.

Yes, I guess it is giving you a hit. So there's an Italian guy called Girolamo Benzoni. And in 1575, he was very disobliging about chocolate. He went to Mexico and roamed around a bit. And he said, I won't do it in an Italian accent. He said, It seemed more... I will. It seemed more a drink for pigs. So he says he was there for a year and he didn't want to drink any. Whenever he went past a settlement, Somebody would come out and say, Have a chocolate. Have a chocolate. They would be amazed when he refused it, and they would go away laughing, laughing at him because of his chocolate. But he couldn't find wine, so eventually he cracked and started drinking chocolate. And he said he was very disappointed. So when it gets to Spain, people by that point are sweetening it already. I mean, the chocolate that you and I eat, Tom, has been sweetened, obviously.

So with sugar?

They are using sugar. They're using sugar, they're using honey, and they're using vanilla. And of course, the Spanish have already been producing sugar for some considerable time on the Canary Islands. And then they've taken sugar to the Caribbean as well. But there is also an interesting religious dimension, Tom. Have you seen this? I know you love a religious dimension. Well, you think everything is a religious dimension. No, I don't.

I had no idea that there That was a religious dimension.

Did you not? No. So the issue, I mean, there are multiple issues, but if we cut to the chase, issue number one is if the Mexica have been using it in their rituals. Oh, is it idolatrous? Is it bad form to be drinking chocolate. It seems that the Dominicans are very down on chocolate. So they actually supposedly pester the Pope to outlaw it. To ban it? Yeah, to ban chocolate. And apparently in 1569, Pope Pius IV, drank some chocolate, and he said it was, and I quote, so foul, he decided there was no need to ban it. Right.

So again, not a friend of Capri.

Not a friend of cabri. Now, the second debate is a big issue for Rishisunak. So you may have read, Tom, Rishisunak fasts. Have you read that?

Yeah, you make fasts on Monday, doesn't he?

Yeah. Sunday night, five o'clock on Tuesday morning. Strange time to break your fast, but anyway, there you go. He's got a lot to do. He gets up early. It's like you. Anyway, the problem for Rishisunak with chocolate is he drinks tea and coffee. He can do that. Could he drink chocolate? What would your answer be there?

Yeah, I'd have said so.

Well, you would agree with some friers, but not others. So you would disagree with Antonio de Leon Pinelo, who in 1636 wrote a book with the catchy title, Questión Moral, si el chocolate que parante el ayuno Ecclesiástico, which is all our listeners will know is, does chocolate break an ecclesiastic fast? A moral question. And he thought it did. He thought it did. He said, this is patently a food. This is no drink.

Is that because it's very thick?

Maybe so. I don't know. Maybe he just didn't like chocolate and he wanted to stop people drinking it. He wanted to diss it. A different man, Tomás Otrado, who came from an order I read called the Cleric's Regular Minor. Do you know them?

No, I've never heard of them.

He wrote another book called Chocolati Tabaco, a uno Ecclesiástico y Natural.

So he's in favor?

Yeah. The Jesuits got involved. They got a cardinal. He wrote a 60-page opinion. How are people writing so much about chocolate? This guy, Cardinal Francesco Maria Brancadio, he wrote a thing called the Chocolatis Potu on the use of chocolate. He said, It's a drink. Come on, it's a drink. Then, unbelievably, the Pope Alexander VII, 1666, he pronounced in Latin. Do you want to read the Latin, Tom?

Liquidum non frangit, jejunum.

Liquids do not break the fast. Yeah, so he said definitely a liquid.

Well, it's brilliant to know that during the counterreformation, these questions are dominating the finest brains in Catholic Europe.

During the age of the 30 years war. Anyway, the Spanish would give chocolate to other European courts as a gift. They would say, look at this extraordinary drink.

Or indeed, food. This is running at the same time as coffee, presumably.

Yes, exactly so.

So it's the sense that they're going head to head, which is more fashionable, coffee or chocolate?

I think a lot of people are very suspicious of chocolate. The French, apparently, are very suspicious of it.

Why are they suspicious? Bitter.

It's bitter, Tom. Bitter.

So they're not worried about the sinister, pagan idolatrous connotations.

And also the issue of the I suppose. The Sunak issue. Now, the English are the great heroes of the story of chocolate in the 19th century, of course, as we would discover. But at this stage, we were very late adopters, Tom.

Right. And this is because every time, say, Francis Drake and all the lads are out capturing Spanish ships, and they're looking for gold, and they pile onto a ship, and all they find are cocoa beans. This is where the English feeling that cocoa beans, because they look like sheep droppings, are not worth keeping, and so they just dump them in the sea.

Yeah, they just think, What are the Spanish up to? Sailing around the Atlantic.

Despite the fact that by this point, actually, cocoa beans must be worth quite a lot.

You would assume so, yeah. But there is a story, certainly in 1579, there's the story of privateers throwing the cocoa beans overboard. And then in 1648, it chronicler writes and says, the Dutch do this. So maybe a Protestant thing, maybe a Protestant suspicion. If all of these cardals- A godly suspicion of- Yeah, all these cardals and theologians, Catholic theologians would be pronouncing a chocolate, and the Dutch, and you say, listen, this is-Papist nonsense. But obviously, the big turning point is 1655, and that is when Cromwell captures Jamaica from the Spanish.

Because, Dominic, presumably, you need a certain supply of labor to harvest this stuff, right? Exactly. Where is this labor coming from?

So at this point, what has happened is people who listen to our episodes about Christopher Columbus will recall that with the deaths of all the Taina people on Hispaniola and so on in the Caribbean, the Spanish started bringing for African slaves and practice they had originated in the Canary Islands. And by the 1650s, the African slave population of the Caribbean is what, about 80% of the whole. And a lot of these islands have effectively been turned into enormous plantations. Sugar, most famously, but also for growing cocoa.

And what's the balance between sugar and cocoa?

Sugar is by far the more-Okay.

So we did an episode, didn't we, on Benjamin lay, where we talked about what life was like in the plantations in the 17th, 18th century. Yes.

So do listen to that. Exactly. So chocolate forms part of that triangular trade. The English have taken Jamaica in 1655, so then they obviously got more invested in the chocolate business, as it were. We get our first recorded mention in 1657, just two years later.

And that's in the wake of the Cromwellian conquest of Jamaica. Exactly. And is there a sense that Cromwell sent this great expedition to Jamaica? It's basically the only thing that they've got. It's really been a bit of a disaster. And do you think there's a feeling on the part of the Commonwealth that they need to hype up? The gains. Yeah, the gains. So okay, we haven't got any gold, but we have got this incredible sheep dropping.

I'm not sure about that. I don't think it's directed from on high. I think it's just...

It's starting to come in.

Yeah, it's just to percolate in, if that's not too much of a coffee-based metaphor. So the public advertiser, 1657, an advertisement says, At a Frenchman's house in Queensgate Alley. Actually interesting, there's a Frenchman in his house, is an excellent West India drink called chocolate to be sold, where you may have it ready at any time at reasonable rates. And doesn't Peeps drink it? Peeps does drink it. Peeps drinks it in 1664. About noon, out with Commissioner Pet, and he and I into a coffee house to drink Jocolatte. Very good, he says.

That's nice.

Yeah, that's lovely. And you get our first recipe, our first English recipe about this time, 1650s. They're flavoring it because it is so bitter. So the recipe says put in sugar. It's a very strange recipe, actually. A long red pepper, cloves, aniseed, almond, nuts, nuts, orange water, flour, and cacao. The hotter it is drunk, the better it is, says the recipe's author.

So it's still absolutely, at this point, a drink. They're not making chocolate bars.

No, it's Usually, you can't make a chocolate bar. And we'll get on to how you make a chocolate bar in due course. It's totally a drink. It is very expensive. So there's high import duties on the beans that come from the Caribbean. So about 50 pence per pound, which is a lot of money. So one historian has done the calculation. That's a week's work for a skilled tradesman to buy a pound of cocoa beans. And the way you would buy it, you would buy it ground. It's a bit like you're buying ground coffee, and it would be pressed into a little cake wrapped in paper. And because it's so expensive, these cakes are tiny. I mean, they're a couple of ounces. They're not big at all. But by the late 17th century, you have chocolate houses. And the most famous one is Mrs. White's Coco House or Mrs. White's Chocolate House, which is in St. James's. And some of our listeners will have heard of the oldest of all St. James's gentlemen's clubs. Oh, Whites. Which is Whites. That's what it is. Oh, right. Whites, the club, which I think David Cameron's father resigned from.

I think all the waiters are called George. Something like that.

Something like that. Something like that. They have one of these betting books that that have with the musing bets placed by the Duke of Wellington or something. Involving balloons. Yes, exactly. Whites was... It was a chocolate shop. How brilliant. It was notorious, apparently, because rakes would go and have lewed conversations over their chocolate. Fruit and nut, please. Damn your eyes. So, Daniel Defoe, he said, Father should warn their daughters of the evils of promiscuous conversations that take place in chocolate houses. So, yeah, watch out. So this is interesting. Chocolate clearly plays multiple roles. So one thing it's not, it's absolutely not, is for children.

There's no mention of-Well, no, because if it's associated with rakes and promiscuity.

And idolatry.

Well, presumably not idolatry, but at this point.

Not at this point. No, no, no. But rakes and promiscuity.

But hellfire clubs and things.

Exactly. And this reputation last quite a long time, the idea that it's an aphrodisiak. The colonies, for example, preserve this. So the Virginia Almanac, 1770. It warns the fair sex to be in a particular manner careful how they meddle with romances, chocolate, novels, and the like, especially in the spring, it says. These are all in flameers and very dangerous.

And it's Is that where the association of chocolate with romance comes from?

Like a flake, Tom. The flake, the woman is in the bath.

It's like Valentine's chocolate, that thing. I guess so, yeah.

Chocolate is regarded as erotic, isn't it? People don't regard tea or coffee as erotic. No. So big tea and big coffee.

They've missed out.

They have missed out. So it's an Afrodite. Bizarrely, it's also a breakfast drink. In 1796, a guy called John Perkins said, The general breakfast of people from the highest to the lowest is tea, coffee, or chocolate. There's a cookbook, as long as it's 1814, Maria Rundell, A New System of Domestic Cookery. She says, Cocoa, a Light and Wholesome Breakfast. She has this recipe. You make basically a chocolate syrup, and you can store it for up to a week, and you add it to milk, and then you make a big hot chocolate, a bowl of hot chocolate, and that's your breakfast. That's your breakfast. Do you know what? When I did my French exchange in the 1980s, we all drank bowls of chocolate breakfast.

Monsieur de Kélu would be thrilled to know that.

But the French Which man of the house, he drank beer at breakfast, and we all drank hot chocolate. The other thing, Tom, is it's medicinal. I think you mentioned at the beginning, didn't you? Mixing it with eels gall and eels livers.Vipers and earthworms.Vipers. I mean, that is very common in the 18th century. Apothecary shops would sell chocolate. You went in with a cough, a hangover. You said your libido was in poor shape.

It's nothing like a goule of ale.

No, it's a swan. It's to get the blood coursing. Benjamin Franklin, apparently, recommended chocolate as a cure for smallpox. That's the idiocy that leads to tax rebellions. Absolutely, it is. Thomas Jefferson, not a friend of the rest of his history, as is on record, he wrote a letter to our old friend, John Adams.

Oh, yeah.

He said- What did he say? He had this American colonial voice. He said, The superiority of chocolate, both for health and nourishment will soon give it the preference over tea and coffee in America, which it has in Spain.

Well, that's not true, is it? Thomas Jefferson also believed that out in the west of America, there were mastodons to be found, and he was wrong about that as well.Wong.

About almost everything, I think. It's fair to say it's almost Jefferson. Right, we're halfway through, Tom, and I think the great conclusion we can draw from this, the overriding thing is that chocolate is a drink. Yes. Nobody has eaten chocolate at this point. But also how exotic it It's exotic, it's exciting, it's erotic, it's medicinal.

It's a great breakfast food.It's a breakfast drink.It's a breakfast drink.

It's not a breakfast food. You've betrayed yourself there. But the good news for you is that all this is about to change. It's one of the great turnarounds, actually. One of the most astonishing revolutions in history, because in the second half, Tom, chocolate will become a food.

Well, we're approaching that momentous date of 1824 when Cadbury was founded. Very good. After the break, we will get onto that. One of the great moments in history. Can't wait.

Can't wait. Welcome back to The Rest is History. We are talking about the history of chocolate, hitherto a liquid, but soon to become a bar.

Would that be fair?

That is fair.

Because we are now approaching basically a wave of Quakers. Yes. And we're being sponsored by a company that is named after one of those participants in the wave of Quakers, John Cadbury.

Yes. So that was 1824. They started Tom. But let us rewind to 1624, because before we get onto a wave of Cadbury-1650s, really. Well, 1694 is the date that a fellow called George Fox was born. He's a man very dear to your heart, isn't he?

Well, so we're very keen on Quakers on the rest of history. Benjamin Lee was a Quaker, and Mary Fisher, who was the most recently crowned Queen of historical love Island, wasn't she? With Tony Ben. She was a Quaker as well. And it all kicks off, as you say, with this guy, George Fox, who is born in 1624. But the Quaker movement doesn't really start taking wing until the 1650s, so the same decade that the English- Taking Jamaica. Take Jamaica.

The years of chocolate.

But back in England, it's a period of religious turmoil. The King's been executed. Cromwell is in charge. And there is freedom of religious opinion. Cromwell is very keen on that. And the Quakers essentially are... They're a very radical Protestant sect. They are seeking the light within them. And when they feel this light descend on them, there's ecstatic, shaking, trembling, roaring, foaming at the mouth, sobbing.

So the scenes of rest of history club get-togethers.

It absolutely is. And so the name Quaker begins as an insult, but like so many other things, it becomes a badge of pride.

There's something to hats. They won't take their hats off.

They won't take their hats off because they are... And women refuse to curtsy. So there's a very moving story, which Alec Ryrie in his wonderful book on protestants tells. There's a servant girl who is in attendance at a aristocrat's table, and all the lords and rakes are laughing at the fact that she won't curtsy, and they offer her £20 to curtsy. And she replied that even if he offered her his entire estate, I durst not do it for all honor belongeth to God. And so In that principle, there is no titles, no clergy, absolute sense of human equality, gender equality, and a sobriety. In the 1650s, this has pushed a very radical extreme so much so that the Quaker evangelists will appear in marketplaces and take their clothes off. It's like Adam, going back to the lost innocence that prevailed in the Garden of Eden before the fall. But in the wake of that convulsive decade, Quakers become Well, I suppose more sober.

As I was about to say later, Quakers are the very last people who would take their clothes off in public, aren't they?

Yeah, they are. So that radical tradition tends to fade. But the absolute commitment to gender equality and social equality, pacifism. Philanthropy. Philanthropy. Philanthropy. So I think to modernize, they seem very attractive, Christian sect.

They're driving modernity, aren't they? Say, in the 18th century, an age of extraordinary change. And then the early 19th century, Quakers are in the forefront of that. So it's Quakers. People from Shropshire will be delighted to hear me mention that Abraham Darby is a Quaker from Shropshire, and it's a Darby family that's responsible for the world's first Iron Bridge, Tom. Where is that, Dominic? So that's in Iron Bridge in Shropshire. It's one of the great tourist destinations. He's never mentioned in all the world. The Stockton Darlington railway, which we talked about in our railways episode with Dan Jackson, that was owned by a Quaker.

It's not Stonehenge, is it?

Josiah Wedwood.

Yeah, it's a great potter.

Potter was a Quaker. Quakers are very, very active in trade and in banking. I think because they've been pushed to the margins, haven't they? Of English life.

So a little bit like Jews as well. Like Jews and Arminius. There's a lot of cross fertilization between Jewish and Quaker communities in the Netherlands and in England.

So because Quakers are not respectable, They can't really make headway in their traditional professions. So they open shops. They open banks. Right.

So they're not Anglican, so therefore they can't go to Oxford and Cambridge, for instance. Exactly.

And the other thing, of course, Barclays and Lloyds both have a Quaker history. They're the two banks. And as you said, Quakers become very sober. I mean, they are literally sober, aren't they? Because they're all about temperature.

So they're not drinking wine. Exactly. So it's like the poor Italian in Mexico. There's no wine. Yes. And so he ends up having to drink chocolate.

Had he been a Quaker, he'd probably got stuck into the chocolate straight away.

But this is why Quakers are getting into chocolate, is it? Because it's an alternative to alcohol.

Exactly. So there are two families in particular, two Quaker families, who are really interesting in the history of Britain and chocolate. And it is Britain that is a chocolate pioneer in many ways in the 19th century and ends up leading the world in chocolate. Hooray. Yeah, top nation, Tom. In so many respects, the chocolate just happens to be one of them. What can I say? So the first one is the Fries. So there's a guy called Joseph Fry. He's a very austere, plain clothes, keeps his hat on, that Quaker. He starts an apothecary business in Bristol in 1753. Is he from Bristol? Yeah, you're going to do Bristol accent. Brilliant. People will love that. He sells chocolate from his apothecary shop. Obviously, it's medicinal, but he sells it interestingly to people in newly fashionable Bath.

Oh, does he?

Yes.

It's Babylon, isn't it? To a Quaker. Yeah. But he's turning up, Would you like a chocolate?

Exactly. So when Jane Austen was in Bath, she might have drunk some chocolate. When Nelson was recuperating Bath, he might have drunk chocolate. So Fri does very well at this. He sends agents out by the 1760s to 50 different towns in England.

And what is it that's enabling him to sell it where other people haven't?

He's making very good quality hot chocolate. He has some interesting press that he uses to grind the machines.

Would you like my top quality chocolate?

He has a cocoa manufacturer. Does he? And he uses water power to grind. So he's industrializing. He's an industrialist.

It's the industrialization of chocolate. It is.

That's what's so interesting. Because what is more, he has a relative called Joseph Staw's Fry, who takes control of the company in 1795. He grinds the beans, Tom, using a James Watt steam engine. Wow, it's all kicking off, isn't it? So it is the industrial revolution. I mean, basically, you have Coco factories.

And do you think that's why Britain becomes top chocolate nation?

I totally think that. So by the early 1800s, the fries have the biggest Coco works in the world.

That is such a source of patriotic pride.

It is. But there's bad form to come because actually, the Dutch are still hanging around. Oh, no. Everybody thinks that Dutch history has ended in 1688 when they came to England. But no, actually- Still going on, is it?

Yes.

There's a father and son, they're called the Van Houten's. Kasparas and Kudra Van Houten. And in the 1820s, it turns out that they invent a machine. Now, this is complicated, Tom. We're not the rest is mechanics.

I should look forward to you explicating it for me, then.

This machine, it presses the fat from roasted cocoa beans. So what does it do, Dominic? How does it do that, Dominic? Where do you bring down one thing and then it presses out something else.

The fat oozes out, doesn't it?

So the center of the bean, as you will know, is called the... It's called the nib. The nib? The nib. And the center of the bean has a lot of natural fat in it. And basically, it It's a hydraulic press, and it presses this out as a cake of cocoa powder. With fat. Sans fat. There's no fat in it. But now what you do, you mix that powder with sugar, and then you mix it with the fat, the cocoa butter that you pressed out. That creates a solid, and this is chocolate that you would eat. So the Dutch, it's always the way with the Dutch, isn't it? They're the great...

They get there first, and then we nick it.

And then they make a mess of it, and then they don't properly monetize it. I don't see that as That's a thing to be proud of.

I mean, that's what happens to Britain as well. Look at our amazing lead in Hoverkrafts.

Yes, Hoverkrafts and home computers. We blew it all. Now, we said there were two Quaker families. Yes. Important now that we avail the other one.

Have we now arrived at Cadbury?

Yeah, Cadbury. So they are from Birmingham. Oh, right. Which is nice. My dad. Yes. So the Holland family are from Birmingham, aren't they? Yeah. The workshop of the world, Tom. Second city of the empire in the 19th century. The great boom town of late 18th century, early 19th century. I suppose to some extent, the successor to Manchester is the crucible of modernity.

Yeah. So absolutely the place that would love a chocolate bar. The most cutting edge place in the world.

Food that you can get. Yes. Most cutting edge place, most cutting edge food. So in 1824, this chap called John Cadbury, who's a Quaker, he opens a shop at 93 Bull Street, Birmingham, and he sells tea, coffee, and cocoa. So at that point, in his mind, it's a drink, and it coexists with tea and coffee. He grinds his own beans in a pestle mortar, very time consuming, in and out. But he opens a factory in 1831, and he, like Fry, is inspired by this Dutch machine. The difference between Cadbury and their competitors is that they are much more high-end. Well, of course.

It's the best chocolate, isn't it?

Listen, their competitors will... I'm sorry to say this reflects poorly on Britain. They will adulterate their chocolate powder with brick dust. With brick dust? Or with lead.

That's very Charles Dickens, isn't it? It is. Hard times.

But Cabri's don't do that. They do have potato flour in there and a bit of treacle and a bit of sego.

But who doesn't have a bit of that?

A lot of people would pay good money for that. And in fact, they do. But not brick dust.

And not vipers or earthworms or the gall of eels.

Actually, John Cadbury gets a reputation People say he is the chocolatier to the stars. He is the chocolatier to Queen Victoria, no less, because he gets a royal warrant.

So she is amused.

Any other Coco manufacturer, he makes a line called Queen's Own Chocolate. The purple coloring that so many people associate It was Cadbury.

Purple wrapping paper.

It was the Royal Purple, Tom. Oh, yeah. They would have rappers with the likeness of Victoria and Albert on them, which is lovely. So Cadbury was doing really well by the 1860s or so. It was very high-end, posh chocolate. His sons, Richard and George, take it over. But they still have the issue that all the chocolate companies have is how do you differentiate yourselves from your rivals. Fruit and Nut. Well, not at this point, Tom. I know you like a Fruit and Nut. I love Fruit and Nut. But no, actually, what they think of as their secret weapon is a thing called Iceland Moss.

Iceland Moss? Yes. Is it literally moss?

It's lichen. Oh. Yeah. They blend the two. Bizarrely, it's sold in yellow packaging. You don't often see a yellow package.

What's the point of this?

They say it's got a rainbow on the packaging, and it shows how healthy it is. It's very healthy because you're getting some moss, some lichen, and you're getting some chocolate, and it's from Iceland.

But it seems a weird thing. Because people aren't normally tucking... I mean, you would have fruit and you would have nut, and so the presence of fruit and nut in a Cadbury chocolate bar.

You've got fruit and nut on the brain, Tom.

I'm rather hoping to become an influencer. Get fruit, nut, chocolate bar.

I'm holding out for an Iceland-Moss.

Lichen?

Yeah. Nobody eats that. Do you want to know what the aptly named historian Deborah Cadbury says about Iceland-Moss, Tom? Yeah, tell me. The untried combination of fluffy be textured like an unflatty cocoa bean would not excite the English palate. Right. Now, they mentioned the yellow rapper with its Reindier. This is quite a new departure for a Quaker company because the Quakers had hitherto been very suspicious of puffery.

So that's advertising?

Advertising. Well, they would be, yeah. But by the late 1860s, actually, Cadbury are leading the world in advertising. Are they? They are. They get endorsements from The Lancet and the British Medical Journal.

What's saying, Chocolate is good for you.

Chocolate is good for you. Medicinal, mix it with an earth worm. Brilliant. You're laughing. They have picture boxes, which previously, Quakers had been very suspicious of. Don't put pictures on your chocolate.

And what pictures? What are they?

Of Queen Victoria, right? Or here's one, Birmingham Gazette says, Pintorial novelties, chaste yet simple. A blue-eyed maiden, some six summers old, designed and drawn by Mr. Richard Cadbury.

Okay, so a little bit of Victorian sentimentalism. Exactly.

They launched their first Easter egg in 1875. And they also go very up market. So they're very, very up market. Their slogan is Absolutely pure, therefore best in the world, which reminds me, Dominic.

So while this is happening in Britain, the Americans must surely be developing, I mean, no offense to our American listeners. Shocking.

But they're terrible chocolate. Terrible chocolate. The Swiss are latecomers, Lindt and Nestlé, they invent a thing called the conching machine. I don't really understand how that works, quite frankly.

But what's the effect?

It conches the chocolate, and it makes it very smooth. But yeah, you're absolutely right to raise the issue of American chocolate. That is a huge puzzle because they've obviously got an enormous market, but their chocolate is... I mean, it's abhorrent and abject, isn't it, Tom? Without being rude to them. Like the cheese. Like the cheese? Yeah, what's going on? Anyway, maybe our American listeners, if they're already left, will let us know in no uncertain terms. Anyway, that's the product. That's what Cadbury are selling. But actually, the really interesting thing is where they are making it and what their workers are doing.

Are they making it outside Birmingham?

They are, Tom. They are. So they're still making it in Birmingham. In 1878, they bought some rural farmland just outside the city, through which a stream runs called The Born. And they call this Bourneville.

So French for town.

Exactly. Calling things ville at this point is seen as quite an upmarket Frenchified It's a nice thing to do. Now, the Bourneville factory becomes the physical embodiment of the Quaker principles that the family actually still espouse. George Cabry, who's now the big cheese in the family. He'd been a teacher in a school for working men in Birmingham. He was really into liberal-minded campaigns in the 1860s, 1870s. So against- Against chimney sweeps. Against chimney sweeps, exactly. Lord Shasbury. Give people better conditions, better housing, clean things up. It's part of that Joseph Chamberlain era.

It's the high-minded Victorian spirit that people laugh at, but we have not earned the right to laugh at because it's completely admirable.

I couldn't agree with you more. So as an employer, he is obviously very paternalistic. But as you say, he's very admirable. He says, let's have bank holidays, let's have a five and a half day working week. I mean, this is a time when a lot of employers don't give people so much as a minute's break all week. He gives the workers more rights, better conditions, all that thing. And then by the 1890s, he starts to go well beyond that and to become a real pioneer. So what he does in the 1890s, he buys 120 acres of land by the factory. And he says, I'm going to plan a model village, Bourneville, and it will, and I quote, alleviate the evils of modern, more cramped living conditions. That's 1993. They start already building it in 1894. And by 1900, they do build things a lot more quickly than we do. In 1900, they have basically built this village out of nowhere. It has more than 300 cottages and houses. Have you been to Bourneville?

No, I've never been. Have you not? But I have read Jonathan Co His brilliant novel, Bourneville, which is all about it.

Right. I mean, if you were going to live in a suburb, that's where you'd live.

But isn't this near where Tolkien moves? Yeah. He gets very upset about it and basically compares it to Mordor.

But the weird thing is that Tolkien should like it because like all of these garden villages, the 1890s, 1900s. It's quite shy. It's quite shy-like, yeah. The buildings are late Victorian, Edwardian vernacular, English vernacular. They're hamster garden suburb. Yeah, hamster. Exactly that. They are a bit William Morrissey. They're meant to be a little bit arts and crafty. So they're modern inside by the standards of the time, but they are very much done in a traditional English style. It's the country in the city, as it were.

Russinaube. Exactly.

Exactly so. And it has a very 1900s team spirit ethos, the age of the Boy Scouts and so on. So they have evening classes. Actually, if you want to get a job at Bourneville in 1910 or something, and you are a young person, one of the conditions of your employment is that you will have to go to evening classes and be improved.

And how do we feel about that?

I think it's brilliant. That's what football clubs do, Tom, with their apprentices. They force them to study. I don't think they make them do Latin, but they make them do maths or something. Quite right, too. There are lots of games. There are games for women, interestingly, sports for women, and then they do them in work time. So they have two half-hour sessions a week. They don't lose pay. They're paid to go to those sessions, and they play ball games and do gymnastics and stuff. The thinking is they'll be healthy, but also they'll be better workers.

Obviously, there's no opportunity to go and get drunk.

No, exactly. But you can go for a restorative chocolate. Yes, you would. After your ball game.

It's just like Central America in.

Yeah, exactly. It's like the Olmex.

Ad1000. Exactly. Ball games and chocolate.

There is a company culture. They're one of the first companies, if not the first company, to have a genuine company culture. So they have the Bourneville Works magazine that's launched in 1902. There is this spirit that actually is easy. People sneer at it now, or they sniff it and say it's very paternalistic. But the ethos of the magazine, I'll read you the quote, To promote what, for lack of a better word, we may describe as the Bourneville spirit, to foster camaraderie and good fellowship, and to add one more to the links binding together the community at Bourneville in mutual service.

That is quite token, isn't it? It is a bit token, I think. It is quite fellowship of the Ring. Yeah.

And they deliver on a lot of these promises. So they have a benefit scheme. They have a pension scheme. So pensions, as our community manager, James Regan, would be the first person to say, were brought in famously by his hero, H. H. Asquith. Actually, Bourneville got there first. So men had pensions in 1996. So even better than Asquith.

Women in Asquith. That was high praise.

That is the highest praise. I have to ask if there's not a man who would have drunk chocolate, is he? No. A temperance town would not have been to his taste. No. And Bourneville still has, there's more than 20,000 people there. Are you aware of the work of the actress Felicity Jones? I don't know. Was she Stephen Hawking's wife in that film with Eddie Redmayne? Didn't see it. She was also, we did an episode about Star Wars. She was the lead in Rogue One, which is an excellent film, arguably the best of the recent Star Wars films. She's from Bourneville. Is she? So there's a lovely fact. Wonderful. So that's Bourneville. Shall we get back to Chocolate, Tom, before we completely run out of time? Yes. So the great news for people who like British chocolate is that as we approach the First World War, Britain leads the world unquestionably. Great days. In the chocolate. Cadbury is now the world's biggest chocolate producer, and it's by far the biggest exporter because, of course, it has the empire. So we're exporting Cadbury chocolate, fries, round trees, all this stuff. Very exciting moment. In 1905, the most famous chocolate bar in the world is launched on that chocolate bar is, of course, the Dairy Milk.

The interesting thing about the Dairy Milk is that the emphasis is very much on the milk and not on the chocolate.

So this is more Quaker.

Yeah. Healthy glass of milk. The logo is still a glass of milk, I think, isn't it? Yeah, it is. Actually, the names they considered before they went for Dairy Milk were calling it either Highland Milk Bar or a Dairy Made Bar. Dairy Made? They went for Dairy Milk.

Dairy Made, I think, is an ice cream, an ice lolly. Is that? They had Dairy Made ice lollys.

There's milk made ice lollys, aren't there? Yeah, maybe. I didn't like However, Tom, I'm sorry to say the Great War. You know my views on the Great War. Anyway, that's by the by. All went wrong, and it was bad news for chocolate and for chocolate firms.

Or it's specifically for British chocolate.

Yeah. There's one bit of good news.

Sure, it's good news for American chocolate, isn't it? It is.

Yeah. So British chocolate makers, they supplied the soldiers in their trenches with chocolate. So you got chocolate as part of your ration. And this was... I mean, Cadbury's did that. Cadbury. Cadbury did it. And they provided books and clothing for the troops as well. International competitors like Nestlé and Lind were completely frozen out of that for obvious reasons.Herses.Herses. I mean, who would have Herses? Would you have Herses chocolate?I.

Guess the GIs.They.

Would, but they didn't turn up until 1918 or something, did they? So that's by the by. It does lead to greater cooperation between the different Quaker companies. They've been talking this actually since before the First World War. We're all Quakers.

Let's join up.

Let's join up and have one massive Quaker chocolate company. They have massive shortages of milk and sugar, and so some of them are struggling. So fries, for example. By 1918, they're talking about, Why don't we absolutely do this and merge into one big company? The Roundtree Company says, no. But the fries company say, yeah, let's do it. So in 1919, they form a company with the spended name of the British Coco and Chocolate Company.

It's not as catchy as Cadbury.

Well, okay. If that's your view, Tom-That is my view. I'm clearly not going to persuade you. So Britain comes out of the war. Actually, I think in some ways you could say this is the point at which chocolate is completely embedded, Tom, in British national life.

To a degree that's exceptional?

I think it is exceptional, actually. I think there are more products in Britain, there are more consumers, there's a greater volume of production than anywhere else in the world.

And have they started adding bits of orange peel? Yes. Fruit and nuts and you know. Yeah. All this has been-blowing bubbles into it. Yeah.

You're mad about the fruit and nuts, and they absolutely are. So you get the fruit and nut, the Bourneville fruit. They make a dark fruit and nut before a milk one, interestingly. God, I love both. So the Bourneville fruit and nut is 1924. The milk fruit and nut is 1926. And the flake. When did you think flake was invented?

1932.

1920. Actually, there's some technical development that allows them to produce the flake, but I don't understand what it is.

Was it that thing that- It's not the conching.

No, it's not the conching.

It wasn't conching.

No, it's some other form of flake machine.

Was it Dutch?

I think the Dutch are this. They're out of history. No, it's not out of history. So there's more products and far, far more people are eating chocolate. So to give you an indication, all that we've talked about actually was still a relatively elite thing and a middle class thing. So in 1900, only one in 30 families, households in Britain, ate chocolate regularly because it's expensive.

And after the war, that's- By 1930, nine out of 10 families or households- Is that because lots of soldiers have got the habit on the trenches?

They've got their own, but also it's really cheap. It's just technological advance. Innovations mean it can be produced much more cheaply The price of a dairy milk fell by 70 % in the decade after the Great War. So sales go through the roof. And now, really, the companies can say we are genuinely mass national enterprises. So the Bourneville Works magazine that I quoted before, in 1934, they say very proudly, At Bourneville, we cater for the man in the street, his wife and family, the poor man at the gate rather than the rich man in his castle.

So it is a long process of both globalization and democratization. It is.

A product once given to King Philip II is now being given to the ordinary folk of Birmingham, their black country.

It's a lovely story, Tom. And they say that history has no sense of progress.

No. What nonsense. Well, you know what Sir George Orwell said about chocolate in the Great Depression? So people carried on eating chocolate in the Depression. Did it involve clogs? Effectively. Orwell said, and I think it's in the road we can appear, he said, It is quite likely that fish and chips, art silk stockings, tin salmon, cut-priced chocolate, five two ounce bars for sixponds. The movies, the radio, Strong Tea, and the Football Pools are between them, averted revolution.

Marvelism.

Isn't it? It's lovely, Tom.

Jumpers for Gold It was chocolate that we have to thank for there being no British Revolution in the 1930s.

Isn't that a lovely thought?

On that bombshell, many thanks to Cadbury for sponsoring us and Dominic giving us the The opportunity to do this episode on chocolate that we've been wanting to do for ages.

I've been craving it, Tom. Yeah.

I have to say that doing this episode has definitely sharpened my desire to have some fruit in that. What's your favorite?

I'll go on the record now. If anyone from Cadbury is listening, you don't have to send them, but I do like a double decker.Double decker.I'm a big fan of a double decker. With the new gar. I like the contrasting textures inside the double decker, Tom. This is something that American chocolate does not get.

Brilliant. Thank you very much for this wonderful tour through the history of chocolate. Thank you, everyone else, for listening.Bye-bye.Bye-bye..