ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 addresses the process of cultural appropriation of chocolate within the Spanish empire. Already in the seventeenth century, Spain emerged as a “civilizing agent” and the source of chocolate’s spread, a mediator between the European nobility and the New World, but this role became central to chocolate’s identity only in the following century. Through a series of asymmetric comparisons with other products such as tea, coffee, coca and tobacco, the analysis of evolving recipes and perceptions of chocolate underscores the mutual influence between imperial political economies of consumption and dynamics of cultural appropriation, which also fostered a constant search for new products to commercialize during the second half of the eighteenth century.
