Handbook of Vanilla Science and Technology

Just as soon as V. planifolia became available for others to exploit, a deluge of social and technological changes contributed to a massive re-organization of the vanilla business and global trade in general. The nineteenth century ushered in the end of the colonial period (sensu stricto) in the Americas, as well as social revolution in Europe. Former colonies won independence, including Mexico in 1821, and in relation to this, many regions outlawed bondage (for example, in the sugar-cane growing regions of the Caribbean and the Guianas). Emancipation, however, triggered a new era of importation of cheap labor, this time from India (Tinker 1974). Europe’s nineteenth-century imperial ambitions also faced new, aggressive competition from the United States, which enacted the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, declaring all of the Americas as its personal sphere of influence for economic opportunity.

As the winds of change swept over many parts of the Americas, the first in a series of momentous events in the history of vanilla transpired: the implementation of artificial pollination. Both Charles Morren, a botanist from Belgium, in the 1830s (Arditti et al. 2009), and Edmond Albius, a boy and slave from Reunion, in the 1840s (Ecott 2004), discovered methods to effect hand pollination of vanilla flowers. The radical consequence of hand pollination of vanilla was that no longer would Papantla be able to maintain its monopoly. Very quickly, by the 1860s, Mexico was replaced by Reunion as the world’s principal vanilla producer (Kouri 2004).

Almost simultaneously, vanilla had a new companion in addition to cacao: ice-cream. The manufacture of ice-cream on an industrial scale, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century in the United States, kept demand alive for Mexican vanilla, since both the Spanish and French had essentially stopped ordering (Kouri 2004). In terms of volume of production, the late 1800s were a golden era for Papantla (which was by then producing vanilla with the aid of hand-pollination), but just as soon as this prosperity materialized it was to vanish, following the isolation of vanillin in 1858 and its laboratory synthesis from pine bark in 1874. Lab/ factory made vanillin, much cheaper and more stable price-wise than vanilla beans, has dominated formulations and the vanilla market since, with over 90% of vanilla products today, including “natural” ones, being derived from sources other than vanilla beans.

The vanilla business in South America would continue to be marginalized in the face of all these changes. New York had its suppliers from Mexico and, increasingly, from Baltimore, Michigan, and New Jersey, and France had its own vanilla supply from the Indian Ocean; the Seychelles, Reunion, and Madagascar. The market for vanilla flavor was essentially saturated. The only mentions of vanilla during this period in South America are manuals for cacao cultivation that also advocate for vanilla cultivation (Rossignon 1850, 1881, 1929; Diaz 1861, pp. 265-268; Martinez RibcSn 1895; Rios 1999; Salazar 2004). The manuals are written with superficial detail with regard to vanilla, do not mention hand-pollination of vanilla flowers and, like Aublet, fail to consider the market opportunities that may or may not have existed for South American vanilla. There are also some references to localized consumption of vanilla (Spence 1878).

8.2 The Vanilla Necklace

The Siona and Secoya, two closely linked Amazonian indigenous groups, occupy a small territory that extends across the converging borders of Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia. Traditionally, the Siona inhabited the territory around the Putumayo and Aguarico rivers, and the Secoya lived in the Santa Maria River region (Vickers and Plowman 1984). The two groups share strong cultural and linguistic parallels, both speaking similar dialects in the Western branch of the Tukanoan language family (Vickers 1989).

Their settlements are generally small in population and characterized by a low level of socio-political organization. After 5 to 20 years, villages are abandoned and groups migrate to new areas of the forest (Vickers 1989). Their subsistence consists of shifting cultivation of horticultural species and hunting, fishing, and gathering of wild food plants (Vickers and Plowman 1984). They also tend garden plots containing a diverse variety of species used for food, medicine, and handicrafts (Vickers 1989). Among Amerindians, the Siona-Secoya are regarded especially for their use of hallucinogenic plants in ceremonial contexts in order to divine the future, cure disease, commune with the spirit world, and perform sorcery (Matteson Langdon 1992).