f Cacao: From an exotic curiosity to a Spanish commodity. The diffusion of new patterns of consumption in eighteenth-century Spain

Stimulant beverages such as chocolate, tea and coffee fascinated the inhabitants of early modern Europe, and they remain today one of the most tangible signs of how exotic foods have penetrated our daily lives. This article forms part of a larger research project exploring the diffusion of chocolate in eighteenth-century Spain: on the one hand investigating the interactions between production, distribution, and consumption and the ideological, religious and scientific constructions created to promote and sustain the appropriation of chocolate in Spanish culture; on the other examining the role of chocolate as a privileged product in the creation of new forms of sociability/consumption and in the democratisation of consumption. Over the course of the eighteenth century cacao passed from being an exotic elite drink to being a well established Spanish commodity. How are we to explain this transformation? To answer this question we must explore the impact of colonial politics, the organisation of Spain’s Atlantic economy and the scientific, medical and religious discourses related to the adoption and appropriation of cacao by different social classes, alongside the evidence provided by travellers and other contemporary commentators.