Guardian Review
Working your way through Chocolate Wars it's impossible not to find yourself reaching for a Kit Kat, Crunchie or Milky Way. For despite putting her own family - the Cadburys of Bournville, purveyors of Daily Milk and Milk Tray - at the soft, chewy centre of her book, Deborah Cadbury also tells a broader story about the development of the confectionery industry from the first stirrings of the cocoa bean in Hanoverian London to the buy-outs and mergers of contemporary capitalism. This means that in the course of this well-executed piece of narrative history we learn not just about the home team of Cadbury but also about Fry, Rowntree, Terry and Macintosh, as well as Nestle, Tobler, Lindt and Menier, not forgetting Hershey and Mars. The result is a smooth blend of "commodity biography" - a sub-genre made popular 15 years ago with the likes of Cod and Salt - and family saga. Whenever the technology starts to pall - and there is a limit to how long you can stay interested in "conching", the process whereby chocolate goes from gritty paste into creamy loveliness - there's always a human story to latch on to. Grandfathers work diligently but cling to the past, bad dads turn up with harebrained schemes, maverick younger brothers invent new tastes out of happy accidents. It is all rather delicious. Better still, it is good for you too. For what Cadbury wants us to take away from this selection box of dates, faces and cocoa nibs is the fact that, once upon a time, capitalism had a conscience. The big three British chocolate companies - Cadbury, Fry and Rowntree - all emerged from the cradle of Quakerism, which developed in the lea of the English civil war. Excluded from the professions and public office, Quakers traditionally turned their hand to trade, where their self-imposed rules about the sinfulness of debt and the virtues of fair dealing ensured that they flourished. Quakers cornered the market in banking - Barclays and Lloyds were theirs - and shopkeeping. The Cadburys themselves started as Birmingham drapers with a keen eye for a market trend and an equally energetic mission to do right by their fellow man. Excited chatter about a new colonial commodity called cocoa suggested not so much the possibility of profit as the chance to wean the denizens of Hogarth's street scenes off the gin. Traded carefully, cocoa might save souls. With these salvationist qualities in mind, Cadbury initially developed cocoa as a health drink. While other less scrupulous - for which read non-Quaker - manufacturers cut their supplies with brick dust and iron filings, the Cadburys mixed theirs with lichen and gave it the bracing name of "Iceland Moss". Unsurprisingly perhaps, it failed to take off. Even more worryingly, no amount of offering the problem up to the Lord seemed to do the trick. What the Cadburys needed was a killer product. They got it in the end, thanks not so much to prayer as to poaching. Buying a patented press from a Dutch rival allowed them to produce both a more refined drinking cocoa and the beginnings of the modern chocolate bar. The trouble was that these new, improved products were more expensive than anything else on the market. There was nothing for it but to resort to advertising - something which Quakers traditionally regarded as so much "puffery". Setting aside their scruples, the Cadburys opted for a poster showing an over-ripe little girl in a sailor suit quaffing "absolutely pure" cocoa. Very soon the firm was back in profit. This, though, is not a story of good intentions gone soft. The moment the Cadburys could afford to, they set about giving back. By 1880 they had built Bournville, their model village. Four miles outside the city centre, it was a paradise of arts and crafts cottages, with optional cricket and free dentistry. Even more remarkably, the firm seems to have achieved this without too much heavy-handed paternalism. Certainly the young men and women in the photographs look as if they know they've got a better deal than their cousins left behind in the slums of Birmingham. All of which makes the current state of affairs doubly ironic. The author loses no opportunity to remind us that the idea that big business is synonymous with a culture of individualistic greed would have seemed extraordinary to her ancestors. As far as the Cadburys and the other 4,000 or so Quaker families who ran much of Britain in the 19th century were concerned, money was only worth something if it was put to the common good. The founding fathers of these immensely successful firms skimped on food, never went by cab and regarded a long tramp in the countryside as all the holiday anyone could need. The second sadness concerns Cadbury more specifically. Last year the company was sold, with much bad feeling, to Kraft, and now comes the news that some of its offices will be moved to Switzerland. That Cadbury should now shift to the homeland of its former rivals is one of those ironies that global capitalism springs on us every now and then. But what is anger-inducing in even the mildest and most peaceable of souls is that the move to Switzerland is apparently designed to reduce Cadbury's UK corporation tax bill. This, surely, would make the firm's founders hang their heads in shame. Kathryn Hughes's The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton is published by HarperPerennial. To order Chocolate Wars for pounds 16 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 - Kathryn Hughes Better still, it is good for you too. For what [Deborah Cadbury] wants us to take away from this selection box of dates, faces and cocoa nibs is the fact that, once upon a time, capitalism had a conscience. The big three British chocolate companies - Cadbury, Fry and Rowntree - all emerged from the cradle of Quakerism, which developed in the lea of the English civil war. Excluded from the professions and public office, Quakers traditionally turned their hand to trade, where their self-imposed rules about the sinfulness of debt and the virtues of fair dealing ensured that they flourished. Quakers cornered the market in banking - Barclays and Lloyds were theirs - and shopkeeping. The Cadburys themselves started as Birmingham drapers with a keen eye for a market trend and an equally energetic mission to do right by their fellow man. Excited chatter about a new colonial commodity called cocoa suggested not so much the possibility of profit as the chance to wean the denizens of Hogarth's street scenes off the gin. Traded carefully, cocoa might save souls. - Kathryn Hughes.