“Serpentes parvulæ fallunt nec publice conquiruntur; ubi aliqua solitam mensuram transit et in monstrum excrevit, ubi fontes sputu inficit et, si adflavit, deurit obteritque, quacumque incessit, ballistis petitur. Possunt verba dare et evadere pusilla mala, ingentibus obviam itur.”
Lucius Annæi Senecæ «De Clementia» I.XXV.IV. Ancient Rome, 55-56.
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This century has revealed that cacao consumption dates back 5,500 years to the Mayo Chinchipe Marañón culture, linking ancient cacao to the Fine Aroma variety, prized in today’s premium chocolate production, from the Amazon region now known as southern Ecuador. Cacao usage, spanning millennia, eventually migrated to Mesoamerica. The Olmecs are believed to have made beverages from ground cacao, water, spices, berries, and herbs. This legacy continued among the Mayan and Aztec peoples, who incorporated cacao into potions, medicines, and sacred rites, attributing to it divine essence and provenance. This belief is reflected in the scientific name of the cacao tree, Theobroma cacao (Linnaeus, 1753). In the language of the Mexica empire, Náhuatl, it was called cacahuacuáhuitl, and its fruit simply cacahuatl, giving rise to the term cacao. The word chocolate likely stems from the Náhuatl term xocoātl, blending ātl (water) and xoco (sour).
Spanish conquerors first encountered cacahuatl on Isla Guanaja during Columbus’s exploratory mission in 1502. Although he was personally prohibited from taking slaves on his fourth voyage due to his well-documented abusive practices, just the year before, Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella had authorized Nicolás de Ovando to import African slaves to Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic). This marked the first official step toward the institutionalization of the transatlantic slave trade in the Americas.
Cacao seeds were highly prized in ancient Mesoamerica, where the metaphor yollotli, eztli (heart, blood) was used to represent it, a drink reserved for the nobility—lords, senators, and brave, well-born warriors—because it was both costly and scarce. Common people who consumed it without permission could be punished with death.
It was during Hernán Cortés’ conquest that the significance of cacao was recognized by the Spanish, leading to its cultivation on the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago, and later in Jamaica. The methods of preparing chocolate were introduced to Spain, possibly at the Monasterio de Piedra in 1534, though the details of this introduction are debated. These preparation methods were closely guarded, with Spanish authorities tightly controlling the dissemination of knowledge on how to properly prepare and consume chocolate.
For the conquest of Mexico, few African slaves participated due to their elevated cost. However, in some expeditions, African slaves outnumbered the Spaniards. In these cases, they could earn their freedom and, in some instances, land as a reward for their contributions. One notable example is Juan Valiente, who arrived in Mexico in 1505. After convincing his owner to allow him to join various expeditions, he participated in the conquest of Chile in 1533. As a result, he was granted lands in Santiago and an encomienda –an exploitative system in which the Spanish crown granted settlers the legal right to extract tribute or labor from Indigenous peoples, often working them to the point of death.
The native population of Hispaniola fell from about 1 million in 1492 to 250 in 1540. The rapid depopulation of indigenous peoples due to conquest –with its Old World diseases–, combined with the Spanish Empire’s growing demand for labor to support its expanding agricultural (sugar, cacao, tobacco) and mining industries, accelerated the importation of African slaves. By 1530, for instance, approximately 87% of Puerto Rico’s 2,619 inhabitants were enslaved.
Initially, the Spanish were far more interested in cacao’s use as currency rather than its culinary use, since cacao was a prominent example of early payment methods. Despite counterfeit, cacao continued to circulate as currency well into the colonial period and beyond, even surviving into the early 20th century in southeastern Mexico, where its use gradually declined over time. Cacao production rapidly expanded thanks to the encomienda , and berserk efforts to profit from it by conquistadores. Anything could be purchased with cacao: clothing, provisions, slaves, and even gold—a material that was adeptly refined across the ‘New World.’ Before European arrival, gold had already been adopted for transactions, and a prime example is the self-sufficient Chibcha civilization, masters of gold-working with a measurement system that exceeded Spanish mathematical precision. However, despite its impressive form and function, gold was looted from all native cultures, exchanged for colorful trinkets and beads, and ultimately melted down into bars or ingots.
In 1535, the Spanish crown established the first mint in their Kingdom of the Indies, allocating 90% of its production for export. However, cacao seeds persisted in circulation as a form of currency. A hare was priced at 10 cacao seeds, a slave at around 4,000 cacao seeds (often prisoners of war, debtors, or criminals), and 200 cacao seeds equated to 1 silver real—a metallic coin that devalued over time, eventually plummeting to 15 cacao seeds per unit by 1720. In those days, the Crown issued two copper coins for lesser exchanges, but these were quickly withdrawn from circulation due to the populace’s refusal to accept them, despite the threat of fines, lashes, and compulsory labor.
After several years of missionary criticism of how indigenous peoples were abused, in 1537 Pope Paul III contradicted earlier papal documents supporting the Doctrine of Discovery, such as the Bulls Dum Diversas (1452), Romanus Pontifex (1455), and Inter Caetera (1493) and proclaimed the apostolic brief Pastorale officium and the Bull Sublimis Deus. He declared that Indigenous peoples and all non-Christians should not be enslaved, affirming their right to liberty and property. Humanitarian pressures, along with concerns about the diminishing supply of labor, led to the creation of the New Laws of 1542. These laws prohibited the enslavement of Indigenous peoples in New Spain and declared them vassals of the King. However, enforcement was inconsistent, and settlers often ignored the laws. In 1549, the Spanish Crown formally withdrew the encomienda system. Nevertheless, Indigenous communities continued to provide forced labor, often with minimal or no compensation, under new systems that, in theory, were not considered slavery, such as the Repartimiento or the Mita, introduced in 1570 by Viceroy Francisco de Toledo. He transformed the ancient Inca practice of mandatory state service—the Mit’a—into a form of coerced labor, primarily for mining in Potosí, where communities were required to provide one-seventh of their male labor force at any given time. Workers were subjected to grueling conditions, often for no pay or for meager compensation, leading to the deaths of many.
In these harrowing odysseys, cacao continued crossing seas to the Iberian shores, where the once bitter aphrodisiac was enriched with vanilla, sweetened, and rapidly adopted by the European elite.
In 1585, Spain had already established a royal monopoly over cacao, which was heavily taxed, further centralizing control over its distribution. By the end of the century, the annual tribute payment in the Viceroyalty of New Spain amounted to either 1,600 cacao seeds or 1 gold peso. The cost of an indigenous person ranged between 300 and 500 cacao seeds, contingent on factors such as gender, age, health, and skills, while 8 to 10 cacao seeds could secure a session with a prostitute.
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Beyond Spain, cacao’s conquest extended to France (1615) and England (1650), sweeping through the entire Slumil K’ajxemk’op [‘Rebel land’]. Yet, it met skepticism: ‘ilquale più pare beveraggio da porci, che de huomini,’ Girolamo Benzoni critiqued in Historia del Mondo Nuovo, dedicated to Pope Pius IV in 1565. Nonetheless, merely four years hence, Pius V sanctified its consumption as not violating the fast. The surge in European consumption necessitated increased production, leading to the enslavement of Africans for the cultivation of cacao and other crops in the Americas, such as sugar, tobacco, and cotton, earmarked for Europe. In fact, as early as 1619, the Dutch ship White Lion, carrying approximately 20 African slaves, arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, marking the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade’s expansion into North America. During this epoch, each Spanish settler could employ two to four indigenous individuals, compensating them with approximately 100 cacao seeds for a day’s toil from dawn till dusk.
In 1663, Maryland passed legislation that established the legal basis for slavery, differentiating between enslaved individuals and indentured servants, thus laying the foundation for systemic racial slavery.
The Sveriges Riksbank, established in 1668 as the world’s first central bank, preceded chocolate’s arrival in Scandinavia by about two decades. By that time Louis XV sought to regulate both wholesale and retail chocolate sales in France, while in 1711 a Swedish abundance ordinance stipulated: ‘Den som brukar Thé, Caffé och Chocolade hemma i sitt Hus, betalar Två Daler Silfvermynt utan åtskillnad.’
The “Asiento de Negros” agreement between Spain and England in 1713 allowed the importation of African slaves into Spanish territories for 30 years. This legal framework for the transatlantic slave trade encouraged increased participation from all European powers. This is the case of Denmark-Norway, which was already partaking in a triangular trade that involved exchanging European goods for African slaves from the Gold Coast (now Ghana), who were then transported to Caribbean colonies to work on plantations producing sugar and other goods shipped to Europe.
Spain monopolized cacao until 1728, relinquishing control of its trade to the Netherlands. In the following years, the first chocolate production machines were set in motion in France (1756) and Barcelona (1780). In France chewable chocolate in the shape of coins was designed to make bitter medicines more palatable for Marie-Antoinette (Debauve, 1779). These ‘utile dulci’ chocolates were termed ‘pistoles,’ a French word for Spanish gold coins.
The ensuing decade marked the peak of the transatlantic slave trade. By the late 18th century, European-style chocolate had made its way to North America, coinciding with revolutionary France’s efforts to abolish slavery in its Caribbean colonies, formalized on February 4, 1794. In 1801, Toussaint Louverture occupied Santo Domingo and proclaimed freedom for the enslaved. Denmark-Norway became one of the first participants in the transatlantic slave trade to prohibit the practice in 1803, having traded over 120,000 individuals. Haiti declared its independence in 1804 after more than a decade of slave rebellions.
Napoleon’s Continental System, implemented in 1806, restricted trade with Britain and its colonies, causing a shortage of cocoa in continental Europe. Chocolatiers in Turin, faced with dwindling cocoa supplies, combined their limited cocoa with the abundant hazelnuts from the nearby Langhe hills (known as Tonda Gentile del Piemonte). This blend of chocolate and hazelnuts became known as gianduia.
In 1807, the British Parliament enacted the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, while the United States prohibited the importation of slaves in 1808. In 1810, Miguel Hidalgo called for the abolition of slavery in Mexico during his push for independence, and between 1811 and 1814, the insurgent general José María Morelos minted the first truly Mexican coin. His decree expunged emblems of the Spanish monarchy, heralding ‘una flecha con un letrero al pie que señala el viento donde corresponde, que es del sur.’ This act marked the advent of the inaugural fiat currency, pledging redemption upon the revolution’s triumph. Though Mexico secured independence in 1821, the anticipated redemption remained unrealized.
On February 8, 1815, Austria, France, Britain, Portugal, Prussia, Spain, and Sweden-Norway signed a declaration at the Congress of Vienna, committing to abolish the transatlantic slave trade while allowing each nation to determine its own timeline for abolition. The following year, Simón Bolívar decreed the abolition of slavery. As liberal and abolitionist movements gained momentum in the Americas, Portuguese colonizers shifted cacao cultivation to their African colonies, continuing the exploitation of slave labor for production.
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The Industrial Revolution further fueled the thirst for growth. In Amsterdam, a machine separated cacao butter from powder, facilitating its dissolution in hot liquids—such as milk, a long-standing British preference (Van Houten, 1828). In Switzerland two brothers established a chocolate factory for producing hazelnut chocolate (Kohler, 1830). Those years, England saw the debut of the first chocolate bar for sale (Fry & Son, 1847), and concurrently, in France, soluble cacao powder was commercially introduced for both adults and children (Poulain, 1848).
The last documented shipment of slaves arrived in the Empire of Brazil in 1858. A few years later, the United States abolished slavery by amending its constitution (13th Amendment, 1865). Meanwhile in Turin, a improved recipe of Gianduia with gently roasted ground hazelnut and bit of almonds (Prochet Caffarel, 1852) was launched at the local Carnival with the name of gianduiotti and shaped as small triangular prisms wrapped with golden foil (Caffarel, 1865). In 1867 the final shipment of slaves arrived in Cuba, and on the same year invention of milk powder in Vevey marked the beginning of Swiss milk chocolate (Nestlé, 1867), paving the way for chocolate that melted easily in the mouth shortly thereafter (Lindt, 1879).
Spain decreed the abolition of slavery in Cuba in 1886, nearly two decades after revolutionary forces had already proclaimed its end on the island (though a system of patronage persisted until 1894). In 1888, slavery was officially abolished in Brazil, with the with the signing of the Lei Áurea (Golden Law) making it the last country in the Americas to end the practice.
At the beginning of the 20th century in Britain, a wrapping machine capable of packing 100 pieces of chocolate per minute was developed (Forbes and Grover, 1901). For the coronation of Edward VII, a promotional tin of chocolate shaped like a coin was produced, mirroring the design of the new sovereigns and pounds introduced that year (Mazawatee Tea Company, 1902).
In January 6th 1905 at Brompton Hospital festivities, a doctor gave a little speach, presented every one with two packets of tobacco and saying he wasn’t wealthy he gave everyone a a gilded chocolate representing a sovereign coin.
In 1908, Forgrove Machinery Company was granted a patent for impressing designs on foil used for chocolate wrappers. Some sources credit its owners, Forbes and Grover, with pioneering the industrial production of chocolate coins, though this claim remains unverified.
For Christmass 1910 H.Hopcraft commercialized “Chocolate Pings filled with Chocolate coins” (Buks Adverstiser & Aylesbury Nes 24.12.1910)
In the Roaring Twenties, confectionery firms in the eastern United States innovated by introducing chocolate disks wrapped in gold foil as part of the Jewish custom of presenting coins to children during the Festival of Lights. This practice echoed traditions already established in Belgium and the Netherlands in conjunction with Saint Nicholas. Over time, these sweet images of money became enduring symbols of both Hanukkah and Christmas celebrations.
After the Census of 1921, the British Ministry of Labour published in 1927 the Dictionary of Occupational Terms defining a ‘tinfoiler’ as a worker who “wraps cocoa, chocolate, liquorice, etc., in tinfoil, by hand or by feeding, and watching working of automatic machine; sometimes specifically designated (…)” Inspired in this edition, the US Employment Service periodically edited a Dictionary of occupational titles. Its first edition in 1937 included a coin-wrapping-machine operator defined as the one “who operates a machine that covers chocolate tablets with foil, giving them the appearance of coins.” There it was also defined a Vanilla-chocolate-coin counter as a laborer of confection that “selects, counts, and assembles various sized foil-covered chocolates, which are molded and imprinted like a coin, to make up a bag, and drops them in a funnel for bag filler.” also defined as a laborer “who fills net bags with foil-covered chocolates which are molded and imprinted like a coin.”
In 1941, Hungary introduced lightweight aluminum coins, which were quickly counterfeited using chocolate coated in tin foil. The forgers were discovered after a merchant noticed one of the coins was unusually light, leading to a nationwide investigation, though the counterfeit operation was never fully uncovered. Also during World War II, German saboteurs devised a chocolate bar with a concealed steel bomb set to detonate moments after being cut. Additionally, in Germany, Nestlé‘s subsidiary Maggi utilized thousands of prisoners of war and Jewish forced labourers.
In 1946, the Swiss nature protection organization sold chocolate coins made from army reserve chocolate, raising around half a million francs and preventing the conversion of Engadine Lake into a hydroelectric reservoir.
In 1947, an engineer in Brussels near Place Albert Premier invented a machine to produce embossed chocolate coins.
At the opening of the Ballard Branch, Seattle-First National Bank in 1951, bags with silver and gold chocolate coins were gifted to children; while women received gardenias and men received cigars.
In the late 1960s, two Swedish organizations partnered with a chocolate factory to create gold-wrapped chocolate coins featuring images of historic buildings to be preserved, sold each autumn across Sweden to raise funds for the cause.
Marking Britain’s currency decimalization in 1971, Cadbury began making chocolate coins. Production ceased in 2014 but resumed a decade later, by popular demand, now as Cadbury Dairy Milk Christmas Gold Chocolate Coins.
Since the middle of the XX century, plant breeding was acknowledged for enhancing cacao production. Since then, both stock and consumption have steadily increased, a trend mirrored by anthropogenic global warming. Nevertheless, headlines proclaiming ‘Chocolate is on track to go extinct in 40 years’ sporadically emerge, yet it’s likely the small-scale cacao farmers who will perish first with a thermo-tolerant chocolate on the market and production moved to Asia.
Between 1992 and 1997, Cadbury Ltd became a Corporate Member of Save the Children, the UK’s leading international children’s charity. During this time, the company developed several Cause Related Marketing activities, including sponsoring the charity’s 75th anniversary celebrations with a special edition of chocolate coins featuring its logo, sold at 30 pence, and five pence from each sale went directly to the Fund.
Later on, in 2001, the Save the Children disclosed to the BBC that children in Mali were trafficked to labour forcibly on cacao farms for €30. This revelation spurred unforeseen scientific inquiries into the health benefits of chocolate. Concurrently, it prompted the establishment of the Harkin-Engel Protocol, a collaborative endeavour to eradicate the worst forms of child labour and trafficking within cocoa supply chains by 2005. However, a few years past this target, subsequent findings indicated that the cost for children trafficked from Burkina Faso to the Ivory Coast rose to €230, equivalent to about two sacks of cacao at international prices during that period. Morbidly, in Ivory Coast, an undercover investigation revealed that a typical plot allotted to a diligent farmer—as their sole recompense after years of slave work from childhood into adulthood—yields a meager average of just 2 cacao sacks per season. [ca.130kg]
In May 2018, 2,640 ‘golden ticket’ guests were invited to witness Prince Harry and Meghan’s nuptials in the grounds of Windsor Castle, in London. Each attendee received a goody bag, which included a special chocolate coin created for the occasion. According to the producer, these chocolate coins, along with other items from the wedding goody bags, soon began appearing on online auction sites, where they were listed for as much as £20,000.
In 2019, a trafficker, known as a ‘locateur,’ was captured on film confirming that a payment of €300 was considered acceptable, remarking that “not all have the same price, like lambs.” The following year, a study conducted by the NORC social research group at the University of Chicago revealed that in the 2018-19 period, approximately 1,560,000 children, aged 5-17, were engaged in cocoa production in the agricultural households of cocoa-growing regions in Ivory Coast and Ghana. This report highlighted that 95% of these children were subjected to at least one hazardous aspect of child labour, including land clearing, heavy lifting, use of agrochemicals, handling sharp tools, extensive working hours, and night shifts. In 2021, eight children from Mali, former slaves on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast who successfully escaped, launched legal actions in the United States against major chocolate companies (Nestlé, Cargill, Barry Callebaut, Mars, Mondelēz, Hershey, and Olam Americas), accusing them of aiding and abetting slavery on cocoa farms. Although the judges acknowledged the case’s validity, they dismissed it due to its occurrence outside the United States.
A TV feature in April 2022 showcased a producer whose farm yielded approximately 30 sacks of seeds a year (ca. two tons), earning him €2,800, including responsible premiums from major chocolate corporations at €1 per sack. Of this total, a substantial portion covered pesticides, transport, materials, and taxes, leaving less than a third for all employees. In those days, the international ICCO price for a ton of cacao was €2,242. However, cacao farms are often smaller than in this case. Another farmer mentioned producing six to eight sacks annually, thus having to involve his young children in the process, with total earnings of around €400.
Meanwhile, the giant family-owned company Mars initiated corporate responsibility pilot programs aimed at supporting a group of small holder farmers ‘on a path to a sustainable living income in the next 8 years’—from €1 to €2.5 daily. Although their effectiveness has been questioned. In September 2022, the World Bank set the poverty line at €2.15 daily.
On March 30, 2023 the Catholic Church officially rejected “those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery’ ”.
For the coronation of King Charles III in May 2023, Tower Mint sister business Heritage Chocolates –the only mint in the UK still working in chocolate– crafted belgian milk chocolate coins in 13 cm diameter with an image of the official Coronation logo on both sides.
The following month, the ‘Brattle Report on Reparations for Transatlantic Chattel Slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean’ quantified financial reparations for each enslaving country [in trillion USD] : USA 26.790, Britain 24.011, Portugal 20.582, Spain 17.107, France 9.288, The Netherlands 4.886, Brazil 4,434, Denmark 681, Argentina 58, Sweden 12.
Ending that year, Union Berlin fans protested against Bundesliga’s private equity investors by throwing chocolate coins to the field. A protest repeated in January 2024 but this time by both supporters of Cologne and Borussia Dortmund before their match.
Cacao ranks as the eighth illicit financial flow in Africa, underscoring significant economic challenges in the sector with farmers receiving less than 70% of its international value. Additionally, cacao prices have exhibited extreme volatility, significantly impacting farmers and market dynamics..
Today, over 90% of the world’s cocoa stems from plots under three hectares, with Ivory Coast alone hosting 1.2 million such smallholdings, yielding nearly half the global output.
In contrast, just three firms dominate 65% of the grinding sector’s capacity. Within the chocolate trade, the also few leading multinationals, controlling the majority of the lucrative multi-million market, have admitted the presence of child labour in their supply chains, engaging in the worst forms of exploitation. Despite profiting from these practices, they’ve ‘pledged’ to cut reliance on child labor by 70% by 2025.
On October 18, 2024, the Monetary Council of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank reaffirmed its decision from the previous year to replace the image of the late Queen Elizabeth on its currency, announcing that “ten prominent regional figures will be featured on the redesigned banknotes.” A week later, at CHOGM’24 in Samoa, Charles III—King of the UK and other Commonwealth realms—told the leaders of the 56 member countries, “None of us can change the past, but we can commit with all our hearts to learning its lessons and to finding creative ways to right inequalities that endure.” The summit concluded with a statement in which the heads of state agreed that “the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity.” They also committed to actively fostering “inclusive conversations about these harms, paying special attention to women and girls, who have suffered disproportionately from these appalling tragedies in history.” At a subsequent press conference, British Prime Minister Starmer emphasized his “forward look and not on the backwards look,” asserting, “In the two days we’ve been here, none of the discussions have been about money. (…) Our position is very, very clear in relation to that.”
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antipodes café
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COMMENTS | DETAIL |
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i. Moneda de Cambio | 4000 cacao seeds (glued to the wall) |
ii. Moneda de Cambio | 2 cacao sacks (mound OR hanged) |
iii. 2 Marcos Alemanes | Diptych: 2 frames, each with 2 chocolate coins (both sides)—1 Deutsche Mark and 0.50 German Euro. |
iv. Hobby of Kings | Chocolate coin collection (+500 pieces) |
v. Dĕūro | Chocolate coins minted in Madrid |
vi. Cambio | Exchange booth (1 Euro ≙ 1 Dĕūro) |
vii. Cambio | Exchange machine (1 Euro ≙ 1 Dĕūro) |
DISPLAY | … |
Logroño City Hall | i,ii,iv,v,vi (2022.11) |
Obrador, Montevideo | i,ii,iii,v (2023.01) |
Illegal Tender (comments -PDF)
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