Chocolate Wars: From Cadbury to Kraft 200 Years of Sweet Success and Bitter Rivalry

Author(s): Deborah Cadbury

World History

In Chocolate Wars bestselling historian and award-winning documentary maker Deborah Cadbury takes a journey into her own family history to uncover the rivalries that have driven 250 years of chocolate empire-building. In the early nineteenth century Richard Tapper Cadbury sent his son, John, to London to study a new and exotic commodity: cocoa. Within a generation, John's sons, Richard and George, had created a chocolate company to rival the great English firms of Fry and Rowntree, and their European competitors Lindt and Nestle. The major English firms were all Quaker family enterprises, and their business aims were infused with religious idealism. In America, Milton Hershey and Forrest Mars proved that they had the appetite for business on a huge scale, and successfully resisted the English companies' attempts to master the American market. As chocolate companies raced to compete around the globe, Quaker capitalism met a challenge that would eventually defeat it. At the turn of the millennium Cadbury, the sole independent survivor of England's chocolate dynasties, became the world's largest confectionary company. But before long it too faced a threat to its very survival, and the chocolate wars culminated in a multi-billion pound showdown pitting independence and Quaker tradition against the cut-throat tactics of a corporate leviathan. Featuring a colourful cast of savvy entrepreneurs, brilliant eccentrics and resourceful visionaries, Chocolate Wars is the story of a uniquely alluring product and of the evolution, for better and worse, of modern business.

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'This is history, brought bang up to date, in the hands of a master chocolatier - storyteller' - Evening Standard 'There are fascinating things here!I relished the story of chocolate itself' - Observer 'Clear, readable and richly detailed' - Sunday Times

Deborah Cadbury is the highly acclaimed, bestselling author of several books, including The Dinosaur Hunters, The Lost King of France and Seven Wonders of the Industrial World. She has also won numerous international awards as a TV producer for the BBC, including an Emmy for 'Horizon'. She lives in London.

General Fields

  • : 9780007325573
  • : HarperCollins Publishers Limited
  • : HarperPress
  • : 0.26
  • : April 2011
  • : United Kingdom
  • : June 2011
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : 352
  • : 338.7664509
  • : English
  • : 911
  • : Paperback
  • : Deborah Cadbury