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.
