Folks with a fascination for Jamaican history will be familiar with the exploits of Sir Hans Sloane, the Irish-born botanist and doctor who came here in 1687 as the personal physician of the Governor, the Duke of Albemarle. Despite careful ministrations, the governor died within a year of his arrival here, and it was Sloane who had to embalm his body for its return to England.

In addition to attending to the governor and his entourage, Sloane had an abiding interest in Jamaica’s plants, products and mineral resources, and so he stayed on in Jamaica for a short time in which he assembled a collection of insects, shells, fish, and other specimens. He made diligent studies of myriad cases, including such topics as the weather, earthquakes, the island’s topography, and the behaviour of the inhabitants, in particular escaped African slaves. The results of his work are well recorded and preserved in the archives of his homeland.

Today, my interest concerns the connection between Sloane, the Jamaican cocoa, and the world-renowned Cadbury chocolate bars. It was he who introduced the English public to chocolates and this led directly to the development of chocolate bars for eating. The story began right here in Jamaica.

Of course, Sloane did not invent the use of chocolate. This had been going on for hundreds of years in South and Central America, where the people used it medicinally, mixed with chili peppers, for a variety of ailments including stomach problems, as well as coughs and colds. In Jamaica, Sloane observed the Jamaican peasants using it as a health-giving beverage, made by pulverising the dried cocoa beans in mortars. He found the taste bitter, nauseous, and too oily, but decided to add milk and sugar to make the drink more agreeable to his and other European palates.

On his return to England, Sloane patented his liquid chocolate recipe and made a considerable income from its sales in apothecaries as a medicine. It was advertised as being “greatly recommended by several eminent physicians for its lightness on the stomach and great use in all consumptive cases”.

Many years later, the Sloane formula was sold to John Cadbury. It was developed into bars and at first sold by Cadbury Brothers of London and Birmingham as “Sir Hans Sloane’s milk chocolate”. The directions on the label read: “Put one ounce of chocolate (which is two squares) to a pint of boiling milk or a pint of milk and water; add sugar and milk or other chocolate.”

The Cadbury family continued experimenting with and improving on Sloane’s chocolate. The company had its ups and downs until George Cadbury turned it into a famous manufacturer of cocoa and chocolate products. It remains so today, a billion-dollar firm with international fame that has its roots in the cocoa trees of Jamaica. But the story for Jamaica’s Cadbury connection does not end there.

In 1938, consideration was being given to establishing a Cadbury milk chocolate factory in Jamaica, which would supply the West Indies and South and Central America. But there arose some major difficulties, including the fact that, at the time, Cadbury was using more than 90 million gallons of milk in its factories, and that was used to gauge the extent to which Jamaica would have had to develop its milk industry before it could take any big share of the firm’s manufacturing business. It was also recognised that, at the time, Jamaican sugar was costing much more than the world prices. The need for air-conditioning in the manufacturing process was also considered and the conclusion was that the electricity cost would be too high. The chocolate factory idea was abandoned then, but Jamaica got a condensed milk factory in collaboration with Nestlé’.

Seventeen years later, in 1955, when Norman Manley became chief minister of Jamaica, it was his long-held dream to have the island develop by way of a planned economy, rather than the ad hoc development of the preceding years. Regarded then as a Fabian socialist, he projected plans to attract investments and create thousands of jobs over a five-year period. Anxious to pursue centralised economic planning, he persuaded Arthur Goldschmidt, acting director general of the Technical Assistance Administration at the United Nations Organization, to release one of their consultants on loan to Jamaica. The man chosen was George Cadbury, an economic adviser and planner, who was also grandson of the great chocolatier. Cadbury had spent five years on industrial development in Canada, and had once worked with Sir Stafford Cripps, a chancellor of the exchequer in England, who earlier had been keynote speaker at the launching of the People’s National Party.

Norman Manley proceeded to establish a Ministry of Production with himself in charge, and a feature of this was the Central Planning Unit with Cadbury as senior economic adviser and chairman of the Economic Advisory Council. It was out of this planning that the bauxite industry was dramatically reorganised and the government’s levy increased from a basis of 60 cents a ton to $3.85; and the royalty was raised from 10 cents to 40 cents, all tax payments to be computed in US dollars. Later, Manley told the House of Representatives: “The present gap between imports and exports…will be wiped out entirely as bauxite and alumina become the largest, by far, in our export returns.”

When George Cadbury finished his term in Jamaica, the Cadbury connection resumed, at least for a while, when Cadbury Foods Jamaica Limited became associated with the Highgate factory that was being operated by Jamaica Food Products. It began producing Fry’s Cocoa, Bournvita, Kool-aid, and Jello, but closed in 1977 because the world price of imported cocoa beans had made it impossible to operate at a profit. A group of enterprising young Jamaicans then took over and began producing Highgate chocolate bars. However, this business also experienced financial difficulties and eventually closed its doors.

Can Jamaica get a big chocolate factory again? The answer may lie in the same difficulties that faced the 1938 considerations: high cost of electricity, the cost of sugar, and the insufficiency of milk production.

Ken Jones is a veteran journalist, public relations consultant, and is the author of books on Marcus Garvey, Alexander Bustamante

PULL QUOTE

In 1938, consideration was being given to establishing a Cadbury milk chocolate factory in Jamaica, which would supply the West Indies and South and Central America. But there arose some major difficulties… The chocolate factory idea was abandoned then, but Jamaica got a condensed milk factory in collaboration with Nestle’