How did a country without a single homegrown cocoa bean become one of the world’s leading chocolate manufacturers? swissinfo.ch explains how the history of chocolate as we know it is the history of Swiss innovation, immigration, luck – and love. The $100 billion (CHF100 billion) global chocolate industry has certainly come a long way since the days, some 3,000 years ago, when inhabitants of central and southern America would gather around the fire with a bitter, grainy drink called “xocolātl”. While it’s true that Europeans have been drinking chocolate since the 17th century, chocolate as we know it today is largely thanks to a handful of 19th-century Swiss confectioners and entrepreneurs, many of whom remain household names around the world. Let’s meet some of the main figures in this Chocolate Revolution and their claims to fame. 1819: Queen Victoria is born, James Monroe is in the White House … and the world’s first mechanised chocolate factory is opened. François-Louis ...
