Trade Overview
The ‘Wine of Araby’
Coffee was probably first seen as a commodity in fifteenth-century Yemen; its popularity “expanded rapidly throughout the Islamic world, and it was in fairly wide use by the time its consumption first attracted controversy in Mecca in 1511” (Wild ix). Ironically, it was there that the Shadhili Sufi sect of Islam popularized the beverage as a means to escape materialism and stimulate their nightly rituals. Coffee soon became associated with the Ottoman Turks, whose splendor the Europeans sought to mimic. Indicative of world trade, coffee “served in porcelain cups, newly arrived from China, and on plates made from Mexican silver, spiced with sugar from the Caribbean...and joined with tobacco from the Americas” was a symbol of distinction for the rising masters of the world economy (McNeill). By the late 16th century, the desirable ‘Wine of Araby’ reached the west (Wild x).
Coffee Drenches Europe
A Lebanese Jew opened England’s first coffeehouse in Oxford in 1650. By 1700, London had 2,000 coffeehouses, and by 1750 the the coffee tree grew on five continents (Pendergrast 12, 17). As early as the 1690s, Yemen surrendered its position as top coffee producer when the European maritime powers circumvented the Yemeni port of Mocha (Wild x). Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, nearly all coffee was grown in Dutch, French, and British overseas colonies, with the French Saint Domingue (now Haiti) the world’s leading producer (McNeill). Coffee and human bondage intertwined as African slaves in the Americas and coerced laborers in Java, Ceylon, and other areas expanded. Monocultural coffee plantations caused long-term “oppression and land dispossession of indigenous peoples, the abandoning of subsistence agriculture in favor of exports, overreliance on foreign markets, destruction of the rain forest, and environmental degradation” (Pendergrast xviii).
Coffee Without Slavery
Global prices of coffee skyrocketed during the nineteenth century when slave revolts in Saint Domingue almost ended the island’s production of coffee. Brazil immediately took over as the world's primary producer, exporting to its new biggest customer, the USA. Because slavery was not abolished in Brazil until 1888 – see "Complaints From Brazil" at right – they were able to keep costs low compared to abolitionist countries, making coffee accessible to the working class (McNeill).
Growth, Big Business, and Regulation
Between 1800 and 1900, per capita coffee consumption expanded from well under a pound up to thirteen pounds with the US responsible for nearly half this expansion. World coffee imports grew fifteen-fold in the nineteenth century – by 1900, coffee was second only to grains and sugar as most valuable commodity in international commerce (McNeill).
Helping to lower costs of coffee was the introduction of the bitter Coffea robusta to the worldwide monopoly of the luxurious Coffea arabica. The number of coffee roasters shrank as chains and supermarkets concentrated the dwindling number of merging coffee companies. As big coffee business grew, growing countries earned less and less of the final price. Estimates indicate that growing countries earned about half the final price in 1950 but earn only ten to fifteen percent of the final price today; marketers of fair-trade coffee attempt to bolster growers by offering above-market prices (McNeill).
Coffee prices have always been versatile; “rumors of Brazilian frosts cause price hikes, while surprisingly large harvests produce devastating declines” (Pendergrast 63). Dating back to 1906, growers tried to increase world market prices, leading to the creation of the 1961 International Coffee Organization (ICO) to regulate pre-agreed restrictions or expansions of coffee supplies to stabilize prices (Wild). But as Cold War tensions faded, the United States pushed for global free trade and withdrew from the ICO. Coffee support prices suffered a devastating blow, and “a handful of major food conglomerates became the masters of the world coffee economy” (McNeill).
Today
Today, coffee is primarily produced in Brazil, with Vietnam close behind. India, Indonesia, Colombia, and parts of Africa also export large quantities of coffee beans. Coffee trade knows few geographic bounds as a popular global drink.
Sources disagree on how many workers worldwide depended on coffee for their livelihood in 2002, ranging from 60 million to 125 million, though approximately 25 million small producers in developing countries grow coffee (Wild). The low prices paid to modern coffee producers are causing “the largest enforced global lay-off of workers in history” (Wild 1). Inequality grows. Producing countries that once received 40% of final revenues in 1991 earned a mere 13% by 2013 (Wild). Nonetheless, coffee has “provided an essential cash crop for struggling family famers, the basis for national industrialization and modernization, a model or organic production and fair trade, and a valuable habitat for migratory birds” (Pendergrast xviii).
Ironically, coffee’s popularity is rising in China, Africa and the Middle East – the places where coffee first originated – but is now seen and consumed as a symbol of “Western modernity” (McNeill).
Coffee was probably first seen as a commodity in fifteenth-century Yemen; its popularity “expanded rapidly throughout the Islamic world, and it was in fairly wide use by the time its consumption first attracted controversy in Mecca in 1511” (Wild ix). Ironically, it was there that the Shadhili Sufi sect of Islam popularized the beverage as a means to escape materialism and stimulate their nightly rituals. Coffee soon became associated with the Ottoman Turks, whose splendor the Europeans sought to mimic. Indicative of world trade, coffee “served in porcelain cups, newly arrived from China, and on plates made from Mexican silver, spiced with sugar from the Caribbean...and joined with tobacco from the Americas” was a symbol of distinction for the rising masters of the world economy (McNeill). By the late 16th century, the desirable ‘Wine of Araby’ reached the west (Wild x).
Coffee Drenches Europe
A Lebanese Jew opened England’s first coffeehouse in Oxford in 1650. By 1700, London had 2,000 coffeehouses, and by 1750 the the coffee tree grew on five continents (Pendergrast 12, 17). As early as the 1690s, Yemen surrendered its position as top coffee producer when the European maritime powers circumvented the Yemeni port of Mocha (Wild x). Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, nearly all coffee was grown in Dutch, French, and British overseas colonies, with the French Saint Domingue (now Haiti) the world’s leading producer (McNeill). Coffee and human bondage intertwined as African slaves in the Americas and coerced laborers in Java, Ceylon, and other areas expanded. Monocultural coffee plantations caused long-term “oppression and land dispossession of indigenous peoples, the abandoning of subsistence agriculture in favor of exports, overreliance on foreign markets, destruction of the rain forest, and environmental degradation” (Pendergrast xviii).
Coffee Without Slavery
Global prices of coffee skyrocketed during the nineteenth century when slave revolts in Saint Domingue almost ended the island’s production of coffee. Brazil immediately took over as the world's primary producer, exporting to its new biggest customer, the USA. Because slavery was not abolished in Brazil until 1888 – see "Complaints From Brazil" at right – they were able to keep costs low compared to abolitionist countries, making coffee accessible to the working class (McNeill).
Growth, Big Business, and Regulation
Between 1800 and 1900, per capita coffee consumption expanded from well under a pound up to thirteen pounds with the US responsible for nearly half this expansion. World coffee imports grew fifteen-fold in the nineteenth century – by 1900, coffee was second only to grains and sugar as most valuable commodity in international commerce (McNeill).
Helping to lower costs of coffee was the introduction of the bitter Coffea robusta to the worldwide monopoly of the luxurious Coffea arabica. The number of coffee roasters shrank as chains and supermarkets concentrated the dwindling number of merging coffee companies. As big coffee business grew, growing countries earned less and less of the final price. Estimates indicate that growing countries earned about half the final price in 1950 but earn only ten to fifteen percent of the final price today; marketers of fair-trade coffee attempt to bolster growers by offering above-market prices (McNeill).
Coffee prices have always been versatile; “rumors of Brazilian frosts cause price hikes, while surprisingly large harvests produce devastating declines” (Pendergrast 63). Dating back to 1906, growers tried to increase world market prices, leading to the creation of the 1961 International Coffee Organization (ICO) to regulate pre-agreed restrictions or expansions of coffee supplies to stabilize prices (Wild). But as Cold War tensions faded, the United States pushed for global free trade and withdrew from the ICO. Coffee support prices suffered a devastating blow, and “a handful of major food conglomerates became the masters of the world coffee economy” (McNeill).
Today
Today, coffee is primarily produced in Brazil, with Vietnam close behind. India, Indonesia, Colombia, and parts of Africa also export large quantities of coffee beans. Coffee trade knows few geographic bounds as a popular global drink.
Sources disagree on how many workers worldwide depended on coffee for their livelihood in 2002, ranging from 60 million to 125 million, though approximately 25 million small producers in developing countries grow coffee (Wild). The low prices paid to modern coffee producers are causing “the largest enforced global lay-off of workers in history” (Wild 1). Inequality grows. Producing countries that once received 40% of final revenues in 1991 earned a mere 13% by 2013 (Wild). Nonetheless, coffee has “provided an essential cash crop for struggling family famers, the basis for national industrialization and modernization, a model or organic production and fair trade, and a valuable habitat for migratory birds” (Pendergrast xviii).
Ironically, coffee’s popularity is rising in China, Africa and the Middle East – the places where coffee first originated – but is now seen and consumed as a symbol of “Western modernity” (McNeill).
Still Learning
Historical understanding of this global commodity continues to change. In 1996, British archaeologists in the United Arab Emirates discovered twelfth century Chinese pottery in a layer containing shards of Yemeni pottery of the same era, and there, amongst the detritus, were two carbonized coffee beans. The coffee trade may date back further than previously thought (Wild).
Historical understanding of this global commodity continues to change. In 1996, British archaeologists in the United Arab Emirates discovered twelfth century Chinese pottery in a layer containing shards of Yemeni pottery of the same era, and there, amongst the detritus, were two carbonized coffee beans. The coffee trade may date back further than previously thought (Wild).
Works Cited:
"Complaints from Brazil." Daily Inter Ocean. July 20, 1889, accessed March 18, 2015, 19th Century U.S. Newspapers.
McNeill, William Hardy. “Coffee.” Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History. Berkshire Publishing Group, 01 Jan 2011.
Pendergrast, Mark. Uncommon Grounds – The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World. New York: Basic Books, 1999.
"Starbucks Sees Big Growth in China." CNNMoney. Cable News Network, 29 July 2013. Web. 16 Apr. 2015.
Wild, Antony. Coffee, A Dark History. New York: Norton & Company, Inc., 2004.
"Complaints from Brazil." Daily Inter Ocean. July 20, 1889, accessed March 18, 2015, 19th Century U.S. Newspapers.
McNeill, William Hardy. “Coffee.” Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History. Berkshire Publishing Group, 01 Jan 2011.
Pendergrast, Mark. Uncommon Grounds – The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World. New York: Basic Books, 1999.
"Starbucks Sees Big Growth in China." CNNMoney. Cable News Network, 29 July 2013. Web. 16 Apr. 2015.
Wild, Antony. Coffee, A Dark History. New York: Norton & Company, Inc., 2004.