If I was one of the kids who found a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, I’m certain I’d be the first one to get lost. I love chocolate, like really love chocolate. A few feet into the factory, I’m certain I’d just plunge into a chocolate river. I wouldn’t even make it long enough to see the oompa loompa dance routine.
The 2023 film Willy Wonka is a modernized backstory to the Chocolatier of the 1964 British children’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The scene above captures something really interesting.
After the young Willy Wonka catches an oompa loompa stealing from him, this exchange goes down:
Oompa Loompa: You have absolutely no right going around embottling innocent strangers.
Willy Wonka: Innocent! Hold on you’ve been stealing from me for years.
Oompa Loompa: Well you started it!
Willy Wonka: Me ?
Oompa Loompa: You stole our cocoa beans!
Willy Wonka: What are you talking about???
Well, we’re going to talk about that today!
“What is …?” is a series to help you understand historical concepts, terms, and topics still used today.
Today’s lesson is What is imperialism?
If you missed the last lesson, you can catch up here:
Defining Imperialism
If an empire is a thing to be had then imperialism is the way of acquiring it.
Stephen Howe says it like this:
If an empire is a kind of object, usually a political entity, then imperialism is a process – or in some understandings, an attitude, an ideology, even a philosophy of life. That makes it inherently even harder to define than empire.1
Like chocolate, there are many different kinds of imperialism which makes a simple definition hard to muster. However, here’s an attempt at a definition (you can find a shorter one at the end!).
Imperialism is the ways by which an entity expands, projects power and influence, and differentiates between inhabitants of those territories resulting in an unbalanced relationship between the metropole and the colony (or acquired territory of influence).
There are of course different caveats one can make here, but the important part here is to get a simplified working definition. There are varieties such as cultural imperialism, economic imperialism, liberal imperialism, etc.
Let’s take a historical example to get a better understanding of one kind of imperialism.
Hobson: 20th Century Definition of Imperialism
In 1902, the English economist J.A. Hobson published what would become one his most influential pieces of writing simply entitled Imperialism: A Study. In this text, Hobson draws on his experience living through the global economic downturn of the late 1880s. He was a journalist during the Second Boer War in South Africa when he began to write this piece.
Let’s take a look at an excerpt from his book. I’ve used my highlighter to show you the key points.
This was written just a few years after what historians have called “The Scramble for Africa.” This term is used to describe the carving up of African territories along European lines during the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885. At this time, British companies already had a presence in many of these African territories that morphed into places where the British established official governance.
So what exactly is Hobson arguing more broadly in his book?
Simply, he argues imperialism is closely linked to capitalism. Lenin would eventually adopt Hobson’s work to make the following argument–imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism.
Hobson wants his readers to understand that British imperialism was defined by the expansion of British companies into new markets and territories to induce trade, extract resources, and turn a profit.
So what does this have to do with chocolate?
In the early 19th century, a young man by the name of John Cadbury was sent by his father from his home in Birmingham to London to study a new plant called Cocoa. This plant was taking Europe by storm as tropical scientists began to transform cocoa into many different forms like “drinking chocolate” (hot chocolate), cocoa powder, and the chocolate bar. John Cadbury eventually founded Cadbury’s in 1824.2
Originally, large European companies gained a foothold in parts of South America where the cocoa bean was being cultivated in large quantities. As Europe began to develop a sweet tooth for chocolate, demand for cocoa skyrocketed. Given its limited supply at the time, chocolate was a luxury good in Europe, only enjoyed by the upper echelons of society.
Then something happened in the 1880s! The demand for chocolate got so high that chocolate companies began looking for more and more cocoa to import. Where did they turn to….? West Africa!
The varieties of cocoa found in the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) and parts of Nigeria and Ivory Coast had a quicker production timeline and were more resistant to diseases than the South American variants. In just a few years, the Gold Coast became the heart of the worldwide cocoa industry.
The historian Corey Ross3 puts it this way,
“By the 1930s, West African farmers, many of them smallholders, accounted for around two-thirds of global cocoa production.”
With the increase in cocoa production and extraction from West Africa, chocolate was no longer a rich man’s delight. Now, chocolate was more affordable and a mass market good that anyone could sink their teeth into.
Richard Cadbury, John Cadbury’s son, actually has an interesting sketch of the cocoa bean from his 1896 book Cocoa: All About It. You can read his book, which was written under the pen name Historicus, here.
Deborah Cadbury, a descendant of the Cadbury Chocolate Family, posed an important question in her 2011 book Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between the World's Greatest Chocolate Makers
Are the goals of John Cadbury and his sons reflected in the modern global powerhouse?
I leave that to the reader to decide.
It’s truly up to you to decide, but before you throw away all of your Valentine’s Day chocolate, I want you to watch this new documentary from Vice News on modern-day cocoa producers in Ghana and their efforts to reclaim the cocoa market.
Key Takeaway
Until the next lesson,
Hi! I’m Shae and I am a doctoral candidate in History at Harvard University. I discovered my love of teaching while teaching at the college and ever since then, I’ve been on a mission to bring the classroom learning experience to all of you. Everyone deserves a world-class education and I’m so glad you’re here!
📚Further Reading
J.A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (1902)
Lowell J. Sartre, Chocolate on Trial: Slavery, Politics, and the Ethics of Business (2005)
Deborah Cadbury, Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between the World's Greatest Chocolate Makers (2011)
Stephen Howe, Empire: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2013)
*All images used here are for educational purposes.
Stephen Howe, Empire, p. 22
For my bookish learners, you can read Deborah Cadbury’s Chocolate Wars For my short-form learners, you can read more here: https://www.englishteastore.com/history-of-cadbury.html
page 72 of Corey Ross, “Bittersweet Harvest: The Colonial Cocoa Boom and the Tropical Forest Frontier,” in Ecology and Power in the Age of Empire: Europe and the Transformation of the Tropical World (Oxford University Press, 2017).