Chocolate Cultivation Spreads

As demand grew and the population of Mexico and Guatemala declined through disease and serfdom, other tropical countries began to be exploited as cacao producers. The Mesoamerican variety of cacao, originally the only one known in the Caribbean and the one that provided all the cacao of Europe up to the end of the 18th century, is called Criollo. It was this which now began to be cultivated in Venezuela, and in Jamaica, Trinidad, and several of the smaller W. Indian islands. In the 17th and 18th centuries Europe’s supply came mainly from these Caribbean plantations and, in declining quantity, from America itself.