As a souvenir of my time in York, I bought this book, The Birth of the Chocolate City, from where else but York’s A Chocolate Story. I really enjoyed the exhibition and I love chocolate so I was eager to learn more about York’s chocolate history.

The Birth of the Chocolate City traces the chocolate history of York and explores life in Georgian York. It starts with a history of chocolate and how it made it to York, an introduction to Mary Tuke, the “mother of York’s chocolate industry”, and then three chapters on the standards of living in York and how Quaker beliefs shaped Rowntree and other famous chocolate companies that were founded in York. Finally, the book ends by bringing us up to speed on all the chocolate-related developments in York to the modern day.

After reading this book, the biggest question I had was: why chocolate? If you read histories of tea, you’ll see that tea was connected to the temperance movement. And even the Cadbury family started by selling tea alongside chocolate and coffee. So why did they give up tea and coffee and focus on chocolate?

I did some looking on the internet but the closest I could find was this sentence from W.U. Hstry that it was more profitable for the Cadbury brothers to focus on chocolate. In terms of timing, the smuggling of tea started flourishing in the 18th cenutry and apparently, tea remained a favourite good to be smuggled into Britain until the adoption of a free trade policy in the 1840s. If that’s the case, my hypothesis is that:

a. Legal tea was much more expensive than smuggled tea

b. If the Quakers followed their moral principles in business (and there’s not much reason to assume they wouldn’t), then the tea they sold would have been obtained from legal means, which meant that the profit margin would be smaller if they were competing against smuggled tea.

But, this is my hypothesis so if you know why so many Quakers focused on chocolate, let me know!

Tea vs Chocolate digression aside, I really enjoyed learning about life in Georgian York. The book has lots of lovely illustrations which really helped to illustrate aspects of life in the Georgian period. I liked that the book wasn’t focused solely on chocolate, but also talked about other aspects of life in York and gave a more rounded view of where chocolate would have fit in.

I also liked the chapter on Mary Tuke – I hadn’t heard of her before my visit to A Chocolate Story, so it was interesting to be able to read a more detailed synopsis about her life. She was a fascinating woman and it’s a pity that I can’t seem to find any biographies about her.

Readers with a sweet tooth will enjoy this book. It’s a thin book but packed jam-packed with information and pictures and provides a great overview of why York has the title of Chocolate City.