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• 1 2022-05-06T15:56:43-04:00 Sweet Things: Confectioners, Chocolatiers, and A Spoonful of Economic Geography 82 Because everyone should know where to find the gingerbread-bakers. plain 2025-03-12T22:57:42-04:00

  It isn't easy to find chocolate in the archives.

  Then again, it wasn't easy to find chocolate in the Russian Empire. Access to sweets has always been a function of social status. And religious beliefs. And cultural practices associated with health and family. And location. And soil quality. And the availability of steam engines. (You didn't see that one coming, did you!)
  
  Most people see confections as a sidenote in the broader history of production, which focuses on the heavy-hitters of the economy: iron, steel, and textiles. But sweet things, filled as they are with cream and sugar and butter and fruit, matter. As Darra Goldstein points out in the introduction to the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, "sugar was once rare, prized not only for its sweetness but also for its preservative properties." To desire sugar is to be human, but for most of history its consumption was a practice of the wealthy. In Europe, the ability of the lower classes to satisfy their craving is the story of the 19th century boom in sugar beet production. Until then, most people consumed sweets made with honey or fruit. They prepared them at home and served them on plates at the holiday table.
  
  In 1887 the Department of Trade and Manufactures, part of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Empire, published an index of factories operating in what was known as European Russia. If you are researching the history of confectioners and chocolatiers, or generally interested in the sweets revolution of the later 19th century, this is a great place to start. Data collection across the provinces was inconsistent, but each entry includes some combination of the following:
  • factory owner by name and social status
  • factory location by town and (sometimes) street
  • annual production measured in weight and value
  • number of workers
  • number of steam engines and mechanized parts
  • the type and quantity of confection.
  The Index lists 162 confection factories spread across 41 towns and 22 provinces. Together they produced well over 11,000 tons of confection on an annual basis: over 11,000 tons of spice cake, candy, caramel, chocolate, cookies, and pastila. (Keep in mind, the Index included only those factories producing goods worth more than 2,000 rubles per year: countless small shops produced confections in addition to those documented here. Moreover, many entries lack data on production quantity or value.)
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  What can we learn from this landscape of sugar and pastry?