The Chocolate Conscience (review)

Book Reviews43 numerous atrocities of the war. Jennings, nevertheless, makes it clear that the Indians served as convenient excuses by both British and French to cover up the Europeans' own barbaric actions since terrorism "by authority was the order of the day" (p. 205). At Quebec, Wolfe ordered his artillery to fire on residential areas and threatened to kill French POWs, while Montcalm handled his own city's residents who wanted to surrender by threatening them with Indian reprisals. The true heroes of Jennings's magnificent book are the Society of Friends and, more specifically, Israel Pemberton and the Friendly Association. The Society of Friends, who dominated the Pennsylvania Assembly at the outbreak of war, were vilified by the greedy proprietor Thomas Penn and his major propagandist William Smith. The war became intertwined with the political battles between the proprietor and the Quaker-dominated assembly. The Friends accused Penn of mismanaging Indian affairs, which brought on the war. Accused of disloyalty and threatened with disenfranchisement, the Friends, nevertheless, played a major role in the British victory. The Friendly Association made independent inquiries and encouraged negotiations in July 1757 that pacified the eastern Delawares. A year later, prompted by Quakers, New Jersey held a treaty at Burlington to assuage the complaints of the Indians of that area. Working with the able but sickly General John Forbes, the Friendly Association contributed to the making of the great Treaty of Easton in October, 1758. Because many of the Indians now joined the peace ranks and shifted away from the French alliance, the British were later able to achieve success at Fort Duquesne and at Quebec. Jennings suggests that the Friends should be lauded, not maligned as Daniel Boorstin and other historians have done, since Pemberton and his associates "spent more on the cause of peace with the Indians than the combined payments from the proprietor (zero), the governor, the assembly, and the superintendent of Indian affairs" (p. 383). British attempts to centralize control and expand empire eventually helped create American revolutionaries against the King and Parliament. Coming full circle, it was these same revolutionaries who sought their own "empire of fortune " in the Ohio Valley after the Revolution, and control over Indian territories and peoples in the name of liberty. Thus Jennings's work has farreaching implications and should be of paramount interest to any student of American history, since the "war's myth blends with the general myth of the Frontier and thus serves to ennoble and democratize the heroic colonials who became Americans" (p. 171). SUNY - New PaltzLaurence M. Hauptman The Chocolate Conscience. By Gillian Wagner. London: Chatto & Windus, 1987. i, 178 pp. £18.95. What was the chocolate conscience? To find out, Gillian Wagner looks at the history of the cocoa bean and of the three Quaker families—the Frys, the Cadburys, and the Rowntrees—who helped make this "the age of chocolate." She summarizes the chocolate business beginning in the late eighteenth century and the state of the Society of Friends in the nineteenth. Each of the three Quaker families faced very real moral dilemmas when the bitter cocoa bean brought them sweet success and they had to reconcile their religious beliefs and their business practices. A chapter on "Industrial Paternalism" provides the context for the philan- 44Quaker History thropic activities of the Cadburys and Rowntrees. The Frys never succeeded on quite the same scale and tend to get submerged in her account. She argues it was genuine concern for workers and not just economic self-interest that led both the Cadburys and the Rowntrees to establish model communities at Bournville Village and at New Earswick. And, it was more conscience than capital gain that led them both into newspaper ownership, and thus into Liberal politics in the 20th century. The tensions between Quakerism and industrial capitalism molded the chocolate conscience. Should Joseph Rowntree advertise even though he regarded it as an unjustified business expense? Should the Cadburys print racing forecasts in their popular newspaper even though they disapproved of betting? Should Quaker firms use cocoa produced under conditions of virtual slavery? Should Laurence Cadbury sell the News Chronicle! The chocolate conscience was more often bitter than sweet. Although...