Time flies with great content! Renew in to keep enjoying all our premium content.
Prime
Chocolate fortunes brewed on slavery
A worker at a cocoa co-operative for wholesale export sorts cocoa beans in Moussadougou, a village in San-Pedro, on the southern coast of Ivory Coast. PHOTO | AFP
Over the last five weeks, we have been looking at a series of commodities that can be said to have contributed immensely to the wealth of European conquistador nations who charted, conquered and colonised the New World.
By harnessing two factors of production, land and labour for free or at very little cost, adding value up the ladder on the supply side of each commodity and ultimately determining the price of the finished product, the entrepreneurs earned phenomenal profits while contributing handsome revenues to their respective exchequers in taxation. This week we look at cocoa in the final part of the series.
