Chocolate : A Spanish Conquest 1521 - 1600
Until the 1500s, no one in Europe knew anything at all about the delicious drink that would later become a huge hit worldwide. Spain’s search for a route to riches led its explorers to the Americas and introduced them to chocolate’s delicious flavor.
Eventually, the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs made it possible to import chocolate back home, where it quickly became a court favorite. And within 100 years, the love of chocolate spread throughout the rest of Europe.
Although it's likely that other early explorers encountered cacao in the Americas, it wasn’t until Hernán Cortés conquered Mexico in 1521 that the Spanish began to learn about the delicious flavor of chocolate.
Contact between Spaniards and Aztecs opened a gateway for the exchange of ideas and technology—and a new European market for foods like cacao.
The Spanish carried cacao home with them. In 1521, Cortés led his forces against Montezuma’s warriors and defeated them in battle. The Spanish soldiers demanded that Aztec nobles hand over their treasures or be killed.
Cacao, a treasured treat and a form of Aztec money, became one of the spoils of war. Spanish soldiers claimed the Aztec’s supply of cacao and began to demand it from the same peoples from whom the Aztecs had demanded tribute. Before long, cacao and chocolate made their way to Spain.
Indigenous peoples provided labor for landowners in the Americas. In Spain, people couldn’t get enough of this new drink, which had never been tasted before outside the Americas. Keeping up with the demand for chocolate required the labor of millions of people to tend, harvest, and process both sugar and cacao.
From the early 1600s until the late 1800s, enslaved people provided most of this labor—the most inexpensive way for plantation owners to produce large quantities. The first people enslaved for the sake of chocolate were Mesoamericans.
The Spanish didn’t like the bitter flavor of chocolate. At first, Cortés and his men weren’t thrilled by chocolate’s taste. To spice up the brew a bit, they began heating the beverage and adding a variety of ingredients.
Once the drink migrated to Europe, someone eventually got the idea to add sugar, cinnamon, and other spices to the mix—and sweet, hot chocolate was born.
The Spanish introduced a new tool to chocolate making. Spain didn’t really change the way raw cacao was prepared and processed into chocolate. The native peoples still did all the work of harvesting the pods and fermenting, drying, cleaning, and roasting the seeds.
However, the Spanish did bring one new tool to the trade—the molinillo (moh lin EE oh). A wood stirring stick, the molinillo made the job of whipping chocolate into a smooth foam much easier.
Spanish priests introduced the Spanish court to chocolate. Legend has it that, in 1544, a group of Dominican friars took a delegation of native peoples to visit Prince Philip in Spain. These captives gave his majesty his first taste of chocolate, which quickly became the fashionable trend in the Spanish court.
Because of its early colonization of the Americas, Spain held a monopoly on chocolate for many years. Only the wealthiest and most well-connected Spanish nobility could afford this expensive import.
The Spanish Catholic Church drank chocolate for energy. The Spanish recognized chocolate’s restorative and nutritional properties immediately. (Cacao is naturally high in calories and contains caffeine and a similar chemical called theobromine.)
As a result, during the 16th century, chocolate became known as a clerical fasting beverage. After much debate, the Catholic Church allowed people to drink liquid chocolate as a nutritional substitute during fasting periods (when solid foods are taboo).
