From beans to empires: What chocolate can teach us about history

What do 17th-century satire, 19th-century pseudoscience and 20th-century bunnies have in common?

Chocolate.

But not just chocolate. Once-exotic commodities like chocolate, tea and coffee have reshaped economies, cultures and diets. Their stories appear in trade ledgers and recipes, medical journals and war memos, advertisements, ethnographies and literature. The intriguing mix of historical insight is captured in primary sources.

Too often, these threads are studied separately. But imagine the student who discovers they can trace chocolate’s journey across centuries and disciplines, discovering how it became a symbol of empire, health, industry and culture, all at once.

ProQuest Digital Collections, with over 160 million digitized items spanning six centuries of content, brings together nine discipline solutions under a single subscription. These resources make it possible for students, faculty and researchers to explore chocolate not just as food, but as a window into global history, science, commerce and popular culture.

Here’s how ProQuest Digital Collections transforms chocolate from a simple commodity into a rich teaching and research tool.

An Archive Of Appetite and Empire

One of the earliest comprehensive works on chocolate, Traitez nouveaux et curieux du café, du thé et du chocolate (1693) by Mr. St. Disdier, found in the Early Modern Collection, offers both a medical and satirical take on the consumption of these global goods.

More than a recipe book, the treatise explores chocolate’s health effects and stages a fictional dialogue between a doctor, a bourgeois and an Indigenous speaker. This reveals early European perspectives on Mesoamerican traditions and highlights how early modern science, trade and cultural exchange were deeply entangled.

Primary sources like this speak in many registers: botanical, medical, moral, economic and theatrical, opening rich avenues for classroom discussion.

Currency, Colonies and Cacao

A 1750 article in a British magazine, digitized in the Historical Periodicals Collection, presents cacao as a botanical marvel and colonial prize, tracing its origins to Spain’s conquest of Mexico. It also notes how Indigenous peoples used cacao as currency, marking its deep cultural significance before European commodification.

This single article invites interdisciplinary research paths:

• • Botany and environmental science: how new plants were studied and classified
  • Colonial trade and exploitation: how cacao’s value shifted with conquest
  • Cultural erasure and resistance: reframing Indigenous knowledge

Instructors can encourage students to compare imperial narratives with indigenous knowledge systems, offering a view of global history from multiple vantage points.

Health Hype and The Rise Of Chocolate As “Cure”

By the 19th century, chocolate evolved from an exotic resource to a marketed therapeutic food. An article in The Phrenological Journal and Science of Health touts chocolate’s digestive, energizing and stress-relieving powers, early examples of health claims resembling today’s supplement ads.

This marketing reflects broader trends in advertising and scientific authority, visible through digitized historic magazines and periodicals in ProQuest Digital Collections.

Students exploring chocolate’s changing health image can analyze how scientific legitimacy was constructed and sold, prompting critical questions: Who defined “health”? How were public beliefs shaped?

Branding The Bunny: Chocolate in Consumer Culture

By the late 1800s, chocolate had transcended commodity status to become a brand asset. An 1896 Cadbury booklet found within ProQuest One History introduces an early version of the Bournville Bunny, a precursor to the Cadbury Easter Bunny.

This booklet demonstrates how manufacturers used imagery and moral messaging to highlight ethical factory conditions and family values tied to Cadbury’s Quaker roots, building consumer trust and ethical branding.

Business and labor studies students can explore how storytelling was used not only to market products but also to legitimize industrial labor practices and influence consumer perceptions. Chocolate became a part of holiday rituals, making it a cultural symbol larger than a snack.

Crisis, Cocoa and Classification

During World War II, the British government implemented a concentration scheme for the chocolate and sugar industry. A 1942 circular digitized in ProQuest One Global Studies & International Relations, outlines factory closures and supply reallocations under these wartime austerity measures. It permitted only limited local operations after review by the Ministry of Labour in order to save on fuel. Many chocolate factories were closed or had their workforce reduced during the war years as part of these policies.

Chocolate was a popular and familiar part of British daily life and its restriction during wartime rationing marked a culturally significant shift. The rationing of sweets and closure of factories not only reflected economic and policy decisions but also revealed how even familiar comforts became subject to national sacrifice. This document enables students to explore intersections of policy, economy and culture during wartime.

From Page to Pixel: Chocolate in Popular Media

Decades later, chocolate’s story extends into modern entertainment. A 2005 review of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory video game, found in ProQuest One Entertainment & Popular Culture, shows how chocolate’s mythical allure is repackaged for new media.

Based on the classic book and film, the game turns the whimsical factory into an interactive world but draws critique for its gameplay and commercial aims. As the reviewer noted, “With such a rich source of ideas to choose from, we were expecting something much better from a game set in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. [... ] it's still the gaming equivalent of gorging yourself on cooking chocolate as opposed to lovely Galaxy Caramels". This example offers a rich case study for students exploring how chocolate’s mythical allure is repackaged for modern entertainment, reinforcing its lasting place in cultural imagination and media.

From Cacao to Culture: The Power Of Cross-Searching

When all these resources are discoverable within ProQuest Digital Collections, something special happens.

Students, librarians and researchers can move from a single moment in a story to a constellation of sources.

A student who sets out to explore global commodity manufacturing might discover a complex and intriguing history through:

• • 16th-century treatises reflecting early European encounters with new plants and cultures
  • 19th-century marketing materials highlighting industrial and social changes
  • Global policy documents outlining trade regulations, colonial economies and resource management
  • Ethnographic studies examining indigenous and diaspora food practices
  • Media reviews and cultural critiques tracing food’s representation in popular culture

That’s not just research, it’s interdisciplinary discovery in action; connecting dots between anthropology, nutrition, business, colonial history, entertainment and popular culture.

Teaching With Chocolate: A Tasty Example Of An Entry Point For Research

Libraries connect faculty and students with primary sources that enrich teaching and learning. Familiar commodities like chocolate can be powerful tools to spark curiosity and lower barriers to engaging with archival materials.

Because food is accessible and relatable, it helps instructors introduce archival research across disciplines, from history and anthropology to media studies and economics. This encourages interdisciplinary exploration and deeper understanding of complex themes such as culture, power and identity.

ProQuest Digital Collections brings together vast, diverse resources that make it easy for librarians to support curriculum needs and foster discovery.

By promoting these rich collections, librarians empower faculty to design engaging assignments, help students develop critical research skills, and demonstrate the library’s essential role in academic success.

Request your free trial to start exploring ProQuest Digital Collections.

Jodi Johnson

Product Marketing Manager for History and Social Change, Social Science and Performing Arts portfolios. With a profound appreciation for history and a background steeped in the arts, she fuses creativity and scholarly insight to offer compelling narratives and to delve into the historical significance behind them.