Unlike the development of a beet sugar industry, Napoleon’s second contribution to gianduia’s invention was not an outgrowth of the Continental System. In fact, the policy predated the Berlin Decree by more than a decade. In the closing years of the eighteenth century, Napoleon extended unprecedented civil rights to the Waldenses in Piedmont.
Though gianduia was not invented in direct and contemporary response to the Continental System, Napoleon implemented two policies that would have a deep and long-lasting impact on Piedmontese confectionery.
Damaging though it is, the lack of substantiation for gianduia’s early nineteenth century invention might not be fatal to the theory. (Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.) However, several strong circumstantial arguments also militate against that dating.
This week, we return to the myth of the early nineteenth century invention of gianduia. The setting of the story—the Continental System and its impact on industry and individuals—can be easily established. Yet there are no known contemporary sources describing gianduia or a gianduia-like substance in Piedmont during the six years between the Berlin Decree and the de facto collapse of the Continental System in the summer of 1812 when Russia and England made peace with the Treaty of Örebro.
On November 21, 1806—barely a month after the crushing defeat of the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstedt—the 37-year-old Emperor of the French and King of Italy dictated orders from the palace of Berlin. With the “Berlin Decree,” Napoleon instituted the Continental System, a trade policy that many have described as the genesis of gianduia.
