Chocolate Communion

Initially discounted as an unusual Mesoamerican commodity, chocolate came to confound and conquer Europe on a level incomparable by any other transatlantic resource or product. Chocolate was equated with the exotic. It titillated the senses, and mystified the cerebral. The influence of chocolate aroused the arts, embodied the rebellious and personified the avant-garde. It became synonymous with regal status. Through its consumption chocolate healed the body, opened the mind, and stimulated the soul. By examining the diffusion of chocolate throughout Europe, the prestige connected with its ingestion; the connotations associated to its consumption, and its quintessence of the slow disenchantment of dogmatic authority alongside secular archetypes, the reader can discover how chocolate transcended the conventional Eurocentric Columbian narrative going beyond a mere matter of exchange, exploitation, contamination, and conquest