Chocolate Wars: From Cadbury to Kraft: 200 years of Sweet Success and Bitter Rivalry

Richard’s romantic idea of cocoa plantations was fed by the travel narratives that were occasionally featured in fashionable magazines like the Belgravia. One such article described a magical tropical paradise that must have seemed a million miles from Victorian Birmingham. In looking down over the plantation, ‘the vista is like a miniature forest hung with thousands of golden lamps . . . anything more lovely cannot be imagined’. Taller trees such as the coral tree, were planted around the cocoa trees to provide shade. In March, the coral trees became covered in crimson flowers, and ‘At this season, an extensive plain covered with cocoa plantations is a magnificent object. The tops of the coral tree present the appearance of being clothed in flames.’ Passing through the shady walkways of the plantation was like being ‘within the spacious aisles of some grand natural temple’.

To harvest the marrow-like cocoa pods, the plantation workers would break them open with a long knife or cutlass. The pale crimson seeds or beans were scooped out with a wooden spoon, the fleshy pulp scraped off, and the beans dried in the sun until they turned a rich almond brown. This method of preparation had remained essentially unchanged for centuries, and is richly interwoven with the history of the Americas.

Richard could not suspect how far into the past this history of cultivation extended. Recent research has revealed that three millennia have elapsed since the Olmec, the oldest civilisation in the Americas, first domesticated the wild cocoa tree. Little survives of the Olmec, who eked out an existence in the humid lowland forests and savannahs of the Mexican Gulf coast around 1500 to 400 BC, save the striking colossal heads they sculpted of their kings. Evidence that these early Mexicans consumed cocoa comes principally from studies in historical linguistics – their word ‘ka ka wa’ is thought to be the origin of ‘cacao’.

When the Maya became the dominant culture of Mexico from around AD 250 they extended the cultivation of cocoa across the plains of Guatemala and beyond. In Mayan culture, the rich enjoyed a foaming, hot, spicy cocoa drink. The poor took their cocoa with maize as a starchy, porridge-like cold soup that provided easily prepared high-energy food. It could be laced with chilli pepper, giving a distinct afterburn, or enhanced with milder flavourings such as vanilla.

Mayan art reveals that cocoa was highly prized. Archaeologists have found images decorating Mayan pottery of a ‘Cacao God’ seated on his throne adorned with cocoa pods. There is evidence suggesting that Mayan aristocrats were buried with lavish supplies for the afterlife, including ornate painted jars containing cocoa and cocoa flavourings. The earliest image of the preparation of a chocolate drink appears on a Mayan vase from around the eighth century AD, which also depicts a human sacrifice. Two masked figures are beheading their victim, while a woman calmly pours a cocoa drink from one jar to another in order to enhance the much-favoured frothy foam.

‘European knowledge of cocoa as an article of diet,’ Richard wrote in his survey, ‘dates from the discovery of the Western World by Christopher Columbus.’ On 15 August 1502, during Columbus’s fourth trip to the New World, he reached the island of Guanaja, near the Honduran mainland. His men captured two large canoes and found they were Mayan trading ships, laden with cotton, clothing and maize. According to Columbus’s son Ferdinand, there were a great many strange-looking ‘almonds’ on board. ‘They held these almonds at great price,’ he observed. ‘When any of these almonds fell, they all rushed to pick it up, as if an eye had fallen.’ The Europeans could not understand why these little brown pellets should be so valued.

The mystery was solved by the Spanish conquistadors, who arrived in Mexico in 1519. Travelling into the Valley of Mexico, they reached the heart of what was then the Aztec civilisation. It was soon apparent to them that the cocoa bean had special value in Aztec society, since it was used as coinage, and people in the provinces paid tributes to their Emperor, Montezuma, with large baskets of cocoa beans. The Emperor kept a vast store in the royal coffers in the capital city of Tenochtitlan of no fewer than 40,000 such loads: almost a billion cocoa beans. According to one Spanish chronicler, ‘a tolerably good slave’ was worth around one hundred beans, a rabbit cost ten beans, and a prostitute could be procured for as few as eight.

It is now known that the Aztecs, like the Mayans, used their favourite drink in a number of religious rituals, including human sacrifice. The Aztecs believed that their most powerful gods required appeasement, and prisoners of war had to be sacrificed each day to sustain the universe. In one macabre ritual, the heart of a slave was required to be cut out while he was still alive. The slave was selected for his physical perfection, since until the time of his sacrifice, he represented the Aztec gods on earth and was treated with reverence. According to the Spanish Dominican friar Diego de Duran, who wrote The History of the Indies of New Spain in 1581, as the ritual approached its climax, and the fate of the victim was made known, the slave was required to offer himself for death with heroic courage and joy. Should his bravery falter, he could be ‘bewitched’ by a special little cocktail to see him through, prepared from chocolate and mixed with the blood of earlier victims and other ingredients that rendered him nearly unconscious.

Some time in the sixteenth century the cocoa bean found its way to Europe, where it was introduced into the Spanish royal household. The Spanish court initially consumed cocoa the South American way, as a drink in a small bowl, and then gradually replaced the maize, or corn, and chillies with sugar, or sometimes vanilla or cinnamon. In time elaborate chocolate pots were developed in which the heavy liquid was skimmed and allowed to settle before pouring, but essentially the Spanish ground the beans in the same way as the inhabitants of the Americas, crushing them between stones, or grinding them with stone and mortar. The result was a coarse powder.

Richard Cadbury found one written account of cocoa preparation in Madrid in 1664 in which one hundred cocoa beans, toasted and ground to a powder, were mixed with a similar weight of sugar, twelve ground vanilla pods, two grains of chilli pepper, aniseed, six white roses, cinnamon, two dozen almonds and hazelnuts and a little achiote powder to lend a red hue. The resulting paste was used to make a cake or block of cocoa which could be ground to form a drink. But whether mixed with maize or corn to absorb the fatty cocoa oils the Mexican way, or blended with sugar, the cocoa oils made the drink heavy and coarse, and cocoa continued to receive a mixed reception in Spain. Josephus Acosta, a Spanish writer at the turn of the seventeenth century, considered the chocolate drink much overrated, ‘foolishly and without reason, for it is loathsome . . . having a skum or frothe that is very unpleasant to taste’.

For many years the Spanish dominated cocoa cultivation in the Americas. They introduced it to the West Indies, where on islands such as Trinidad it soon became a staple crop. At first, English pirates raiding Spanish ships did not know what the bean was for. In 1648 the English chronicler Thomas Gage observed in his New Survey of the West Indies that when the English or Dutch seized a ship loaded with cocoa beans, ‘in anger and wrath we have hurled overboard this good commodity, not regarding the worth of it’.

Gradually, however, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the cocoa bean found its way into the coffee houses of Europe. Its first recorded mention in England appears in an advertisement in the Public Advertiser on 22 June 1657: ‘At a Frenchman’s house in Queensgate Alley is an excellent West India drink called Chocolate to be sold, where you may have it ready at any time at reasonable rates.’ Word of the exotic new drink spread across England. In the 1660s, the diarist Samuel Pepys describes enjoying his drink of ‘chocolatte’ or ‘Jocolatte’ so much that he was soon ‘slabbering for another’. In 1662 Henry Stubbe, royal physician to King Charles II, published A Discourse Concerning Chocolata, in which he surveyed the ‘nature of the cacao-nut’ and extolled the health benefits of the drink. Taken with spices it could relieve coughs and colds, and strengthen the heart and stomach. For anyone ‘tyred through business’ Stubbe heartily recommended chocolate twice a day. It could even serve as an aphrodisiac. White’s famous Chocolate House opened in 1693 in St James’s, London.

Cocoa continued to gain in popularity, principally as a drink prepared in the Mexican way, but it was also added as a flavouring to meat dishes, soups and puddings. In Italy a recipe for chocolate sorbet survives from 1794 – once the mixture was prepared, ‘the vase is buried in snow layered with salt and frozen’. For the more adventurous palate, Italian recipes from the period listed cocoa as an ingredient in lasagne, or even added it to fried liver. While most European preparations were ‘rough . . . and produced poor results’, according to Richard Cadbury, ‘France developed a better system for roasting and grinding.’ The French confiseurs got straight on with the sweet course; no messing with chillies, curries or fried liver. By the nineteenth century, French confectioners were winning a reputation for their exquisite hand-crafted sweets made from chocolate: delicious mousses, chocolate cakes, crèmes and dragées and chocolate-coated nuts.

With the wheels of European commerce and consumerism driving demand, in the Americas the cultivation of the cocoa bean was gradually extended beyond Mexico and Guatemala, reaching south to the lower slopes of the Andes in Ecuador, the rolling plains of Venezuela and into the fringes of the Amazon rainforest of Brazil. In the Caribbean, cocoa plantations were established on Jamaica, St Lucia and Grenada as well as Trinidad, which became a British colony in 1802.

By the mid-nineteenth century, despite the growing interest in the cocoa bean in Europe, it remained expensive, and principally a novelty for the wealthy. ‘When we take into account the indifferent means of preparation,’ concluded Richard Cadbury, ‘we can hardly be surprised that it did not come into general favour with the public.’ As Richard and George struggled to save their business, the full potential of Theobroma cacao had yet to be revealed. The unprepossessing little bean offered only a tantalising promise of prosperity.

In the early 1860s George and Richard hardly needed to undertake the charade of stocktaking, which they did twice a year. They knew their business did not thrive. The Cadbury brothers’ wide variety of different cocoas did not excite the nation’s tastebuds. ‘We determined that we would close the business when we were unable to pay 20 shillings in the pound,’ George said, determined to honour all their financial agreements in full. He admitted the stocktaking was ‘depressing’, but nonetheless he and Richard thrived on the challenge: ‘We went back again to our work with renewed vigour and were probably happier than most successful men.’

The struggle brought the brothers closer together. Quite apart from sharing the responsibility and the burden with George, Richard proved to be a delight as a partner. He was ‘very good natured and constantly up to practical jokes and fun of various kinds’, George wrote, ‘so that one almost doubts whether immediate success in a business is a blessing’. Workers too recalled Mr George and Mr Richard with a ‘cheery smile’, although they knew ‘the Firm was in low water and losing money’, and ‘at one stage expected any day to hear that the works were to be shut’.

Despite his outward calm, as losses mounted Richard privately formed a list of everything he owned, noting the price each item would fetch if it had to be sold at auction. The birth on 27 September 1862 of his first son, Barrow – named after Richard’s mother’s family – was great cause for celebration, but Richard knew the financial security of his young family was uncertain, and the brothers fully intended to shut the business rather than risk defaulting on any money owed and accruing debt. The stocktaking at the end of the second year was particularly gloomy. By Christmas 1862, the Cadbury brothers’ losses had escalated to a further £304 each.

But for Richard and George there was another motive that went well beyond personal gain. Business was not an end in itself; it was a means to an end. As Quakers, they had a far greater goal to fulfil.

Chapter 3

The Root of All Evil

Richard and George Cadbury shared a vision of social justice and reform: a new world, in which the poor and needy would be lifted from the ‘ruin of deprivation’. For generations, the Cadburys had been members of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, a spiritual movement started by George Fox in the seventeenth century. In a curious irony, the very religion that inspired Quakers to act charitably towards the poor also produced a set of codes and practices that enabled a few thousand close-knit families like the Cadburys to generate astounding material rewards at the start of the industrial age.

Richard and George had been brought up on stories of George Fox, and many of the values, aspirations and disciplines that shaped their lives stemmed from his teachings. Born in 1624, the son of a weaver from Drayton-in-the-Clay (now known as Fenny Drayton) in Leicestershire, Fox grew up with a passionate interest in religion at a time when the country had seen years of religious turmoil; he went to ‘many a priest looking for comfort, but found no comfort from them’. He was appalled at the inhumanity carried out in the name of religion: people imprisoned or even executed for their faith. Disregarding the danger following the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, he left home the following year in some torment, and set out on foot for London. At the age of just nineteen, Fox embarked on his own personal quest for greater understanding.

During these years of travel, ‘when my hopes . . . in all men were gone’, he had an epiphany. The key to religion was not to be found in the sermons of preachers, but in an individual’s inner experience. Inspired, he began to preach, urging people simply to listen to their own consciences. Because ‘God dwelleth in the hearts of obedient people,’ he reasoned, it followed that an individual could find ‘the spirit of Christ within’ to guide them, instead of taking orders from others.

George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement.

Fox blazed a trail across England, preaching against the rituals and outward forms of religion, even the standard forms of prayer and the sacraments. All these he regarded as trivial accessories; irrelevant, possibly even hindering a union with God. These outward symbols of truth, he reasoned, obscured or distorted the real truth, which could be found within each one of us. He spoke out against the corruption within the Church, arguing for social justice and a more honest and immediate form of Christianity. These views put him in direct opposition to the political and religious authorities. If an individual was listening to the voice of God within himself, it followed that priests and religious leaders were needless intermediaries.

Fox was perceived as dangerous, and his preaching blasphemous to established Churches. Even the similarly-minded Puritans objected to him. They too adhered to a rigorous moral code, high standards of self-discipline and a disdain for worldly pursuits, but Fox’s emphasis on the direct relationship between a believer and God went far beyond what most Puritans deemed acceptable. In emphasising the importance of an individual’s experience, Fox appeared contemptuous of the authorities, and mocked their petty regulations. For example, he would not swear on oath. If there was only one absolute truth, he reasoned, what was the point of a double standard, differentiating between ‘truth’ and ‘truth on oath’?

The authorities were exasperated that he declined to pay even lip-service to the class structure, and went so far as to claim that all men and women are equal. To give tangible form to his thoroughly modern message, Fox addressed everyone as ‘thou’, not the more respectful ‘you’ that others used to acknowledge the upper classes. He rejected any outward signs of status or authority. Regardless of wealth, a person should dress simply, with restraint and without extravagance. As for the doffing of hats to indicate respect for those of higher rank, in his Journal he made his position completely clear: a Quaker kept his hat on.

In 1649 Fox crossed one magistrate too many, and was thrown into jail in Nottingham, ‘a pitiful stinking place, where the wind brought in all the stench of the house’. The following year he was jailed for blasphemy in Derby, where a Justice is believed to have been the first to use the term ‘Quaker’, to mock Fox and his followers. He scoffed at the idea expressed in their meetings that they should remain silent until moved to speak, ‘trembling at the word of God’. Despite its origins as a term of abuse, the name ‘Quaker’ soon became widespread.

Fox was imprisoned several times, but the Quaker movement continued to gain momentum. It is estimated that during the reign of Charles II, 198 Quakers were transported overseas as slaves, 338 died from injuries received defending their faith, and 13,562 were imprisoned. Among them were some of Richard and George’s fore-bears, including one Richard Tapper Cadbury, a wool comber who was held in Southgate prison in Exeter in 1683 and again in February 1684.

By the end of Fox’s life in 1691 there were 100,000 Quakers, and the movement had spread to America, parts of Europe and even the West Indies. Fox had established a system of regular meetings for Friends to discuss issues and formalise business: the regional Monthly Meeting, the county Quarterly Meeting and a national Yearly Meeting. Key decisions made at these meetings were written down, and these records became known as the Advices. By 1738 they had been collated by clerks, transcribed in elegant longhand, and bound in a green manuscript volume, Christian and Brotherly Advices, which was made available to Friends’ Meetings across the country. This set out codes of personal conduct for Friends, under such headings as ‘Love’, ‘Covetousness’ and ‘Discipline’. A section on ‘Plainness’, for example, encouraged Quakers to cultivate ‘plainness of speech, behaviour and apparel’. A Friend’s clothing should be dark and unadorned; even collars should be removed from jackets, as they were deemed too decorative.

The strict rules of the Quakers dictated that anyone who married outside the society had to leave. Consequently, Quaker families tended to intermarry, resulting in a close-knit community across Britain of several thousand families. Generations of Quakers had come through years of persecution and suffering with a sense of solidarity, and these bonds were also forged by friendship, marriage, apprenticeships and business. As the Industrial Revolution was gathering speed, this solidarity and self-reliance generated a new spirit of enterprise. At a time when there was no such thing as a national newspaper, the Quakers meeting regularly in different regions across Britain enjoyed a unique forum in which to exchange ideas.

In 1709 Abraham Darby, a Quaker from Shropshire, pioneered a method of smelting high-grade iron using coke rather than charcoal. His son, Abraham Darby II, improved the process, replacing the traditional horse pumps with steam engines to recycle water, and refining techniques for making quality wrought iron. The Darbys manufactured the world’s first iron bridge, iron railway tracks and wheels at their foundry at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire. Their roaring furnaces drew visitors from miles around to observe the striking spectacle of flame, smoke and machine. The younger Darby’s daughter wrote in 1753 that the noise of ‘the stupendous bellows’ was ‘awful to hear’.

Such advances fuelled the development of the iron industry, which drove the wheels of the Industrial Revolution. In Sheffield, the Quaker inventor Benjamin Huntsman developed a purer and stronger form of cast steel. The Lloyds, a Welsh Quaker family, moved to Birmingham to create a factory for making iron rods and nails. In Bristol, a Quaker cooperative launched the Bristol Brass Foundry. By the early eighteenth century Quakers ran approximately two-thirds of all British ironworks.

Railways accelerated the pace of change, and a Quaker was responsible for the world’s first passenger train. In 1814 a meeting with the engineer George Stephenson inspired Edward Pease, a Quaker businessman, to build the Stockton and Darlington Railway, and on 27 September 1825 the first steam-hauled passenger train travelled twelve miles to Stockton on what became known as the ‘Quaker Line’. Numerous Quakers were involved in financing and directing railway companies. Even the railway ticket and stamping machine was devised by a Quaker, Thomas Edmonson, as was the timetable itself, Bradshaw’s Railway Times, devised by George Bradshaw.

There seemed no limit to the number of new ideas from Quaker businessmen. Chinaware, originally imported by the East India Company, sparked developments in pottery and porcelain. In Plymouth, William Cookworthy introduced a new way to make fine china using Cornish china clay. In Staffordshire, Josiah Wedgwood launched his pottery business. Enduring shoe businesses were founded by Quakers: K shoes in Kendall by John Somervell, and James Clark in Street in Somerset established the firm that still bears his name. The Reckitts started their business in household goods, while the Crosfields were soap and chemical manufacturers whose company evolved into Lever Brothers. The roll call of Quaker entrepreneurs resounds through the centuries, with names like Bryant and May, who designed a safer form of matches; Huntley and Palmer, who started a biscuit business in Reading; and Allen and Hanbury, who developed pharmaceuticals.

Banking too was built on Quaker virtue. At a time of little financial regulation, according to the writer Daniel Defoe the activities of many eighteenth-century financiers were ‘founded in Fraud, born of Deceit, nourished by Trick, Cheat, Wheedle, Forgeries, Falsehood’ (not totally dissimilar to some twenty-first-century banks, some might argue). The Quaker traders stood out as being quite different. Customers learned to rely on typical Quaker attributes: skilled bookkeeping, integrity and honesty served up by sober Bible-reading men in plain dark clothes. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, local Quaker businesses began providing a counter in their offices that offered banking services. By the early nineteenth century this practice had blossomed into seventy-four Quaker banks, one for almost every large city in Britain: James Barclay formed Barclays Bank in London, Henry Gurney established Gurney’s Bank in Norwich, Edward Pease formed the Pease Bank in Darlington, Lloyd’s Bank was started in Birmingham, Backhouse’s Bank grew across the north, Birkbeck flourished in Yorkshire, the Foxes set up in Falmouth, the Sparkes in Exeter, and many more. By the time Richard and George Cadbury were born, Quaker banks, founded on a unique and trusted set of values, formed a solid network across the country.

Underpinning all this, the core Quaker beliefs and traditions, and the independence of spirit that went with them, flourished. As its members’ banks and businesses grew, the Society of Friends continued to exchange views in meetings across the country. The stoic independence, self-discipline and questioning rebelliousness fashioned over a century was now channelled into the spirit of enterprise that fuelled the furnaces and mills of the Industrial Revolution.

But there was something else unique that guided Quakers in business from the earliest days of the movement. The original Christian and Brotherly Advices of 1738 included a section on ‘Trading’. This highlighted situations that a Friend might encounter in business, and how to deal with them. It marks the foundation of business ethics built on truth, honesty and justice: values that would form the basis of Quaker capitalism.

Central to the advice was that a Quaker must always honour his word:

• That none launch forth into trading and worldly business beyond what they can manage honourably and with reputation among the Sons of Men, so that they may keep their word with all Men; that their yea may prove their yea indeed, and their nay, may be nay indeed; for whatever is otherwise cometh of the Evil One . . . and brings Dishonour to the Truth of God.

Quakers entering into business were encouraged to keep written accounts, since accurate and thorough bookkeeping helped avoid errors of judgement.

• It is advised that all Friends that are entering into Trade and have not stock sufficient of their own to answer the Trade they aim at be very cautious of running themselves into Debt without advising with some of their Ancient and Experienced Friends among whom they live.

Above all, Quaker elders, many of whom were in trade themselves, were keen to prevent any ‘Great Reproach and Scandal’ that might damage the reputation of the Society:

• It is advised . . . that all Friends concerned be very careful not to contract Extravagant Debts to the endangering and wronging of others and their families, which some have done to the Grieving Hearts of the upright, nor to break promises, contracts and agreements in the Buying and Selling or in any other lawful Affairs, to the injuring themselves and others, occasioning Strife and Contention and Reproach to Truth and Friends.

The local Monthly Meetings across the country were not only a forum for exchanging ideas: Quakers were urged to ‘have a Watchful Eye over all their Members’. If they found anyone ‘Deficient in Discharging their Contracts and just Debts’, they were charged with ‘launching an Inspection into their Circumstances’. Should the transgressor fail to heed honest advice, ‘Friends justifiably may and ought to testify against such offenders.’ Accordingly, Friends collaborated in their local communities to help one another achieve high standards of integrity in trade.

For those who failed to comply, there were further words of guidance. Despite the Advices’ exhortation to Friends to aspire to ‘Truthfulness and Perseverance in Godliness and Honesty’, ‘to our Great Grief we find there are fresh instances of Great Shortness in coming up in the Practice Thereof, particularly by some injuriously defrauding their Creditors of their Debts’. This had led to ‘Grievous Complaints’. The Advices urged further discipline to deal with those ‘Evil Persons’ who proved ‘base and unworthy’. Firstly, the rule which prohibited Friends from suing one another could be waived. Secondly, Monthly Meetings had the power to investigate cases and ‘speedily set righteous Judgment upon the head of the Transgressor’.

Discipline could be severe for any members who were unable to meet the ethical standards required, or who acted imprudently in business. With the astonishing success of Quaker businesses and banks during the Industrial Revolution, protecting the good name of the Society became more important. Those who repeatedly failed to demonstrate the high ethical conduct required of a Quaker tradesman could be ‘disowned’ by the Society. This was seen as a harsh punishment, with the offender excluded from the local Quaker community and recognised publicly as a thief or a cheat.

Effectively as early as 1738, Quakers had a set of specific guidelines for business, which endeavoured to apply the teachings of Christ to the workplace. Straight dealing, fair play and honesty would form the basis of Quaker capitalism, and for those who fell short, there were rules of discipline. These guidelines were supplied to clerks at the Monthly and Quarterly Meetings, and were refined and formally updated every generation. They provide a snapshot of changing ethical concerns as the Industrial Revolution gathered momentum. For example, when the trading guidelines were updated in 1783 in the Book of Extracts, Friends were warned against a ‘most pernicious practice’ which could lead to ‘utter ruin’: the use of paper credit. This was considered ‘highly unbecoming’, falling far short of ‘that uprightness that ought to appear in every member of our religious society’. The 1783 Extracts warned unequivocally that this practice was ‘absolutely inconsistent with the truth’.

The 1738 Advices and 1783 Extracts were updated once again in 1833 into the more formal Rules of Discipline. By this time, material prosperity presented another issue to exercise the minds of Quaker elders. Was it right for a religious person cultivating plainness and simplicity to accumulate wealth? ‘We do not condemn industry, which we believe to be not only praiseworthy but indispensable,’ noted the Rules of Discipline, but ‘the love of money is said in Scripture to be “the root of all Evil”’. The guidelines urged ‘Dear Friends who are favoured with outward prosperity, when riches increase not to set your hearts upon them.’ The work ethic was entirely acceptable, but accumulating riches for oneself was not.