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   Chocolate: A European Sweet | 1521—1600Obtaining Cacao— The SPANISH DEMANDED it from CONQUERED PEOPLES  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. Continue to Making Chocolate |
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