Chewing Gum: The Fortunes of Taste [Hardcover]

A scholar in ecology and social theory, Redclift traveled the Yucatan to research this in-depth, richly detailed history. "The story of chewing gum is very much a Mexican-American affair," he notes, beginning with Mexico’s 75-year-old General Santa Anna on Staten Island in 1869. Believing Yucatan chicle’s rubber-like qualities could launch a rubber tire industry, the ambitious Santa Anna struck a deal with inventor Thomas Adams. Failing to concoct a rubber substitute from the springy sap, Adams instead succeeded with his licorice-flavored Black Jack gum. Consumers went wild, and other entrepreneurs leaped in, including, in 1893, William Wrigley. With free gum samples mailed to millions, Wrigley’s innovative ad campaigns made him one of America’s 10 wealthiest men. His factories produced 280 million sticks of gum weekly, which had far-reaching implications in the Yucatan jungles: "The production and sale of chicle on the part of rebel Mayas Indians... was allowing them to buy arms to fight the Mexican government." American gum manufacturers were dependent on supplies from land controlled by the Mayan rebels, and since "the geopolitics of hemispheric relations lies at the heart of the story of chewing gum," the book has 75 pages on military conflicts, impoverished forest workers, the chicle economy and international harvesting and production methods. With gum added to WWII service rations, 150 billion sticks were shipped overseas, but bubble gum synthetics brought the era of Mayan-harvested chicle to a close. While some readers may be interested in the book’s concluding chapters (which cover abandoned chicle camps, tourism possibilities and renewed interest in chicle for natural organic products), the omission of Bazooka’s contribution to the chewing gum world, as well as the book’s overall dry tone, take away from this book’s general appeal. B&w illus.
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The story of chewing gum encompasses consumerism, Mexican-American relations, and indigenous culture. Gum's constellation of influences even includes Mexican general Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, British historian Redclift informs us, whose chance 1869 meeting with one Thomas Adams instigated the birth of the industry. From that rendezvous, Adams learned about chicle, a tree sap chewed by the inhabitants of the Yucatan Peninsula. Adding spices, sugars, and enticing packaging, Adams made millions, as did an even more successful marketeer, William Wrigley. The ramifications of the American chewing-gum fad deeply affected the people, descendants of the Maya, who collected chicle under arduous conditions and who resisted the central government until the Mexican Revolution sorted itself out in the 1920s. Turning from gum as political force to gum as cultural force, Redclift interestingly explains its advertising-driven associations with youth and rebellion, boosted by its inclusion in American military rations in World War II. Readers will be rewarded not only by the straightforward history but also by the author's discernible fondness for the people and place of Yucatan. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

A scholarly work, 'Chewing Gum-The Fortunes of Taste' makes a solid case for gum's pre-eminence in the realm of mass consumption and popular taste. Even in today's multitasking society-where workers find little time to break away from one job or another or another-gum still has a vital role to play.
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–Santa Cruz Sentinel

....A well-rounded overview of the history of chicle-based chewing gum, and it provides unique insights into globalization and mass marketing.... a fascinating glimpse of an overlooked cultural phenomena..
–Rochelle Caviness, History in Review, August 20, 2004

In Chewing Gum: The Fortunes of Taste, author Michael Redclift investigates the history of chewing gum and its impact on peasant revolutions in Mexico, where the production of chicle fueled a decades-long conflict between the Mayan Indians and the Mexican government. Beginning with the chance meeting between three-time Mexican president and Alamo victor General Santa Ana and an American inventor who, at first, sought to make rubber tires from the chicle, the book goes on to chronicle the functionally useless product, which made people millionaires and held a lasting influence on Mexican-American relations and culture today.
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–History Magazine, November 2004

...Chewing Gum: The Fortunes of Taste is a stunning accomplishment, linking seemingly trivial details together into a web that shows us just how interconnected the world really is.
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–Dennis Chute, The Edmonton Journal, September 26, 2004

But what may interest readers most in this book is Redclift's presentation of chewing gum as a commercial product..
39:2/3
–Winterthur Portfolio

In Chewing Gum, Michael Redclift deftly chronicles the growing popularity of gum in the U.S. alongside a fascinating history of peasant revolution led by charismatic Indians in the jungles of southern Mexico.

Michael Redclift, a leading scholar in ecology and social theory, is a professor of geography at King's College, London. He is author or editor of fifteen books, including Sustainable Development and Wasted.