Colonialism and Coffee
As we celebrate the 200th year of independence from Spain in Costa Rica, we are reflecting on the history and the holdover of colonialism in the country. More specifically, this month, we will be looking at what independence means to women in Costa Rica, while also having a closer look at the colonial history of coffee in Latin America and other places.
Photo by Austin Neill on Unsplash
Where it all began…
The legend has it that coffee was first discovered by dancing goats of Kaldi in Ethiopia. Native to the African continent, coffee traveled the globe, mostly through trades facilitated by the colonial power in our history. Today you can find it grown in over 70 countries around the world.
The written record that describes when coffee was initially cultivated and consumed goes back to the 15th century in the Arabian Peninsula. The how of coffee’s travel from Ethiopia to Yemen is not well known. Writer, Mark Pendergrast, states that coffee plantations might have been deliberately set up during the fifty years that Ethiopia invaded Yemen in the 6th century.
Soon after its introduction, the stimulating drink enchanted the Arabs. It is also believed that the Arab word for wine — qahwa gave birth to the drink’s name, coffee. In its early stage of consumption, coffee was deemed as a medicinal or religious drink for Arab Sufi monks. Soon men crowded public coffee houses to consume coffee, exchange information, and engage in conversations. It gained popularity amongst Muslim pilgrims who spread this magical drink throughout the Islamic world.
By the time Ottoman Turks occupied Yemen in 1536, coffee had gained popularity in many parts of the world, becoming an important export throughout the Turkish Empire. Shipped from the Yemeni port of Mocha to Suez and then commercialized by French and Venetian merchants, the caffeine in coffee mesmerized many around the globe. As coffee proved its economic value, the Turks maintained the monopoly over the tree’s cultivation in Yemen by controlling anyone from taking live seedlings out of the region. It wasn’t until the 1600s, when a Muslim pilgrim smuggled seven seeds out of the country to cultivate them in the mountains of Mysore, in southern India, that coffee started growing outside Yemen.
Coffee’s expansion continued in 1616 when the Dutch who controlled the world’s shipping trade at the time, got their hands on a coffee tree. In 1658, the Dutch transplanted coffee in Ceylon, and in 1699, another coffee plant in Java. After, coffee plants spread to Sumatra, Celebes, Timor, Bali, and other islands in the East Indies. For many years, this production of Dutch coffee in the East Indies controlled the price of coffee in the world market.
Until the mid 17th century, coffee remained an exotic beverage to many — scarce in supply — primarily enjoyed as an expensive medicine by the upper classes. By the 1650s, however, coffee gained popularity in Italy and Venice opened its first coffee shop, Caffe, in 1683. Afterward, coffee as an accessible beverage made its way to Britain, France, Austria, and Germany. The North American colonists, as loyal British subjects, emulated the coffee boom of their mother country — opening their first coffee house in Boston in 1689.
Britain supplied tea to the American colonies through its British East India Company. The enactment of the famous Stamp Act of 1765 and the subsequent “tea party” of 1773 affected the tea supply, leading to an eventual increase in demand for coffee amongst North Americans. As avoiding tea became a patriotic act for people living in the colonies during this time, it also led to an increase in demand for coffeehouses.
This global increase in demand meant an upsurge in prices for coffee. At that time of history, the imperial power of the West still had much control over coffee plantations globally.
Photo by Julian Andres Carmona Serrato on Unsplash
Coffee in Latin America
In the context of Latin America, the first documented coffee plantation was created by the French government in its colony of Martinique when the French received coffee plants from the Dutch in 1714. Subsequently, through “a mini-drama” regarding a border dispute, coffee was transplanted to Portuguese Brazil in 1727.
By 1750, coffee trees grew on five continents including Central and South America. The increasing production of coffee in Latin America was a positive signal to the North Americans who were increasing their demand for coffee each year. The proximity meant it was nearer for them to control the production and supply chain. Due to slave trade, coffee was also becoming less expensive to consume.
Over time, coffee has become an integral part of economies, shaping both laws and governments. Coffee has also played a part in delaying the abolition of slavery and exacerbating social inequities even after the countries gained independence from their colonizers.
”As the European powers brought coffee cultivation to their colonies, the intensive labor required to grow, harvest, and process coffee came from imported slaves… Slaves had initially been brought to the Caribbean to harvest sugarcane…” writes Pendergrast.
After coffee’s introduction to Asia and Latin America, to which coffee is not native, we now find ourselves drinking much of our coffee from the two continents with Brazil and Vietnam being the largest coffee-producing countries of Arabica and Robusta respectively.
Modern Day
While a greater understanding of the complicated history of coffee has been realized slowly over the years, the structure of the inequitable industry has yet to be challenged.
The C-prices (the commodity coffee market prices) have dropped by 27% between 1982 and 2018. In the same period, the US retail price for roasted coffee increased by 98% (IDH- Coffee Living Income Taskforce, 2020). According to the report by Enveritas, 44% of the 12.5 million smallholder coffee farmers globally live in poverty, and 22% are in extreme poverty. In other words, more than 5.5 million coffee farmers are living below the international poverty line of $3.20 a day worldwide despite coffee being one of the largest industries globally. That is, only a handful of countries and companies continue to reap the benefits of the billion-dollar coffee industry even decades after the independence of many countries from its colonizers.
Although imperialism has been removed from day-to-day life for many (sadly, not all), neo-colonialism has prevailed in many industries, including the coffee industry.
Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash
Ultimately, this is not a call for us to cut down on coffee consumption.
Many countries today depend on coffee exports as a large part of their Gross Domestic Product and moving away from coffee as a drink, will most likely do more harm than good. However, this is a call for us to be more conscious about how we source and consume coffee. It is a call for us to examine how we are using our power as a consumer in the buyer-driven industry, that is coffee. And lastly, it is a challenge for you to take action, question companies’ narratives, and structures and hold them accountable for their commitment to do right. What are we doing to make a meaningful change?
“I do not know if coffee and sugar are essential to the happiness of Europe,” wrote a French traveler of the late eighteenth century, “but I know well that these two products have accounted for the unhappiness of two great regions of the world: America [the Caribbean] has been depopulated so as to have land on which to plant them; Africa has been depopulated so as to have the people to cultivate them.”
— Mark Pendergrast, Uncommon grounds: The history of coffee and how it transformed our world
Written by Bean Voyage
Edited by Kayla Sippl
Reference:
Brown, N. (2014, July 17). A Brief History of Global Coffee Production As We Know It (1963–2013). Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. Retrieved September 5, 2021, from https://dailycoffeenews.com/2014/07/17/a-brief-history-of-global-coffee-production-as-we-know-it-1963-2013/
International Coffee Organization. (2014). World coffee trade (1963–2013): a review of the markets, challenges and opportunities facing the sector. London: International Coffee Organization.
Koss, E. (2020, August). Coffee Colonialism 101. Naming Coffee’s Original Sin. Barista Magazine, (August September 2020), 66–70. Retrieved September 5, 2021, from https://lsc-pagepro.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?m=61222&i=667207&p=70&ver=html5
National Coffee Association. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.ncausa.org/about-coffee/history-of-coffee
Panhuysen, S., & Pierrot, J. (2021). Coffee Barometer: 2020.
Pendergrast, M. (2019). Uncommon grounds: The history of coffee and how it transformed our world. New York: Basic Books.
