The Essence of Commodification: Caffeine dependencies in the early modern world

Journal of Social History, Winter, 2001 by Ross W. Jamieson

In 1671 Philippe Sylvestre Dufour, a Lyon pharmacist, published a volume entitled De l'usage du cafe, du the, et du chocolate. This book brought together information circulating in Europe on three caffeine drinks that had all achieved widespread popularity on the continent over the previous thirty years; cacao, coffee and tea. The frontispiece of Dufour's treatise (Figure 1) shows us the triumvirate through the eyes of contemporary Europeans. On the left coffee, being consumed by a man in Middle Eastern garb, from a bowl without handles and a tall metal pot. In the center tea, consumed by a richly dressed man from the Far East, with a bowl without handles, and his squat Chinese teapot. Finally on the right cacao, consumed by a Native American man from a gourd mounted in silver. On the ground in front of him a chocolate pot with its typical horizontal handle, with a beater, or molinillo, for foaming the cacao lying on the ground beside it. All three of the consumers are male, each an exotic stereotype, and eac h bearing the gift of a novel beverage for Europe. (1)

Caffeine and theobromine are two naturally occurring alkaloids that are present in plants used to brew beverages in many cultures. At the end of the fourteenth century Europe was one of the few regions of the world where such drinks were entirely unknown. In the early seventeenth century this situation changed entirely as, according to Fernand-Braudel, "Europe, at the center of the innovations of the world, discovered three new drinks, stimulants and tonics, coffee, tea and chocolate." And yet, is discovery really the word we want here? Caffeine beverages have played an important role in historians' vision of a single world system, in which they provided dry, lightweight, high value commodities that could be transported from the peripheries to supply the people of Europe. These stimulants were an alternative to the traditional alcoholic beverages of medieval Europe, eventually entering the capitalist system as acceptable drinks for daytime consumption by the workforce. The sudden increase in popularity of the consumption of these beverages in Europe in the mid-seventeenth century parallels the rise of a capitalist world economy, in which both consumption and production were important forces behind the development of mass markets. As commodities in early modern Europe, Sidney Mintz has placed caffeine beverages as part of a larger suite of "drug foods" produced on colonial plantations, including sugar and tobacco. All were imported to Europe in sharply increasing quantities from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, in an "intimate and entangled" change in the way Europeans consumed such products. (2)

If, however, we accept that the people of Europe were not the only consumers in the early modern world, the picture becomes more complex. Coffee, tea and chocolate were not the only caffeine beverages available, and their eventual dominance of the European market is only part of complex regional variations in the origins, production, and consumption of caffeine on a world scale in the early modern period. The introduction of caffeine into Europe through several beverages provides a nuanced example of the complexities of colonialism, and the regional variation that occurred in the creation of a world market for caffeine products. For each of the caffeine beverages there is a unique history of the European encounter with a non-western drink, including not only the drink itself, but social signals as to its proper use. This is followed by European attempts to co-opt the regional market for the product, and then the eventual acquisition, or rejection, of the plant as part of the mercantile plantation system of ea rly modern Europe.

Cacao and the Early Spanish Empire

Chocolate, cocoa, or cacao (Theobroma cacao) was the first caffeine beverage encountered by Europeans in the expansion of empires. Cacao was present in the earliest parts of the colonial encounter, as Christopher Columbus, on his 1502 voyage, captured a Maya trading canoe at Guanaja Island, just off Honduras. Paddled by 25 men, the cargo of the canoe included cacao beans. Columbus described them later as the "nuts" which were used as money in New Spain. Even at the time of the encounter the Europeans knew the Maya held the crop in high esteem, because when they were brought on board Columbus' ship some of the beans spilled, and all the Maya began to gather them up frantically. (4)

With the conquest of the Aztec Empire twenty years later, the Spanish realized the true value of cacao in the region. The Aztec elite consumed cacao as a cold infusion. It was prepared in many ways, with the addition of a wide variety of other ingredients, including vanilla, chili peppers, herbs and flowers. The crop had been cultivated since the fifth century in Mesoamerica, and the Aztec Empire maintained large-scale production of cacao in several areas, the most important being along the Pacific coast in Soconusco in modern Mexico and Izalcos in modern El Salvador (Figure 2). It was a form of currency, and an important part of the trade networks of the Aztec. In the conquest of the Aztec elite by the Spanish we see Europe's first encounter with caffeine. The traditional anthropological view of colonialism is one of fragmentation and loss, with the introduction of Western goods destroying the culture of the conquered. And yet the entire construction of Western society was embedded in the colonial enterprise , and as such non-Western cultures contributed to it in many ways. The Aztec were no exception, and very soon after the conquest the Spanish conquerors had begun to be influenced by the conquered. (5)