Book Review: Holt's Quakers and Chocolate

I cover anything related to chocolate here on The Chocolate Cult. I've been a sought after book reviewer for decades now as well, but unlike others who charge a fee to review what you've written, I've never been comfortable doing that. I want anyone who reads one of my book reviews to know that my rating and my opinions cannot be purchased. So when Collective Ink Books reached to ask if I'd like to review the short work by Helen Holt called Quakers and Chocolate I said yes to a free physical copy of it in exchange for my reviewing it, though where was never specified, I put up reviews on Goodreads and Barnes and Noble. I will try to add a review on Amazon but wasn't an option the day I was writing reviews. as well as today's article. No other form of compensation was received for sharing my experiences with this book.

First, let me remind everyone that I'm a trained historian, so why the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries are not my focus period, I have the skills knowledge of how to research and document your research when presenting anything related to history. It is here with the citation of evidence that this book really disappoints in chapter one where older texts are mentioned by name or author but there is no listing in the endnotes. Yes, when and where you looked an original documents matters as does whether it is actually original or not. I've read a fair amount of historical and cultural books and articles about the history of chocolate and this just truly lacks much that is new or well cited.

I've known for years that the Quakers played a big role in the develop of the chocolate business in the UK so I was looking forward to the bulk of this book which was supposed to focus on the Cadbury, Rowntree, and Fry families, their faith, and how it interconnected with their chocolate companies. While some of the information was a repeat, I learned a good deal more about the Cadbury and Rowntree brands, not so much about the Fry family. Indeed, both the Cadbury and Rowntree get two chapters focused on two individuals within their families while other than to mentioned in the general history of Quakers and chocolate, the Fry brands and family is ignored.

The chapters on George Cadbury and Joseph Rowntree make a lot of sense both men were deeply entrenched in the chocolate making as well as men of faith. However, John Wilhelm Rowntree's health limitations and faith took him far from the business and Beatrice Boeke (a Cadbury) wanted nothing to do with the business and other than make that known and refuse the money, she doesn't seem important at all to the products that were made under the Cadbury name. It would have made more sense to focus on a member of the Fry family to balance out the three Quaker connections and then to include, if necessary, one later member of the families who directly worked with the chocolate business.

The result is a disappointing book that though written with good intentions I cannot recommend as a historian. As a chocolate and a Christian, I can say that I learned a few things and that I found topic of how one could conduct business in a more or less faith-led way interesting.