Greed, Trickery, and Deception: The Untold Story of the Coffee Bean

This is a guest post by Raza Imam, from The Coffee Maker Store. Learn more about how you can guest post for Daily Shot Of Coffee here.

Coffee, as legend has it, was first found by Ethiopian shepherds over 1000 years ago who noticed their goats eating the berries of a certain tree. They started to notice strange behavior from their goats, curiously becoming frisky and energetic. Before long, the shepherds’ curiosity got the best of them, and it became a favorite snack among the farmers and shepherds who spent all day in the pastures with their herds. They learned to mix it with goat fat to give them an extra boost of energy during their long days out; it was the birth of the world’s first energy bar! But the history of coffee was soon to be tarnished by the inextricably human vices of greed and betrayal, especially once its commercial potential was established. This multi-series article tells the untold story of the coffee bean…

Toward the end of the 1500’s, European scientists, botanists, and explorers heard of a new plant from Africa and the Middle East. As the word spread, European travelers and traders were turned on by its commercial potential. Having already established trade routes in that part of the world, they had an effective means of distribution for the new commodity. Procuring the coffee bean was the natural next step. By the early 17th century, the first shipments of coffee arrived in Venice. Providing coffee for the Venetians was the start of a very profitable export business, one that continues to this day.

Acutely aware of its massive potential, the Arabs guarded it jealously for almost a century. They went to great lengths to guarantee that no bean capable of germination left their plantations. To achieve this end, they made sure beans were either boiled or parched and vigilantly kept foreigners far away from coffee fields. For 100 years, Yemen remained the sole source of coffee for the entire European coffee trade.

Quick to adopt the trend, Dutch merchants got involved in the rapidly growing coffee business. Being quite industrious, they saw no reason that they couldn’t cultivate and trade the lucrative bean themselves. Not only did they have considerable trade expertise, they had highly trained scientists and botanists. The coffee plant was the missing ingredient to their plan. They already had the best merchant ships in the world and simply needed to secure the plant so they could quickly bring it to Europe. To no surprise, the Dutch managed to sneak into a coffee plantation and steal a live plant and bring it unharmed back to Europe.

Having stolen their very own coffee plant, Dutch traders began cultivation trials on the East Indian Dutch colony of Java, that’s why coffee is commonly known as “java”. By the 1690′s, coffee plantations had rapidly spread to nearby island colonies of Sumatra, Timor, and Bali. The Dutch East India company also began large scale coffee production in Ceylon, where the plant had been previously introduced by the Arabs.

In 1706, Dutch growers in Java sent home the first crop of beans to be planted in the Amsterdam Botanical Garden. This offering, despite its small size, was a critical point in the history of the coffee trade, making Amsterdam the commercial center of coffee grown in Dutch colonies. Seeds from the Amsterdam Botanical Garden were grown into seedlings which were planted throughout the known world. In essence, this project dubbed the Amsterdam Botanical Garden the title of being the birth place of the coffee plantation in the New World.

In 1714, the burgomaster of Amsterdam gifted the King of France (Louis XIV) a five foot tree from the botanical garden. Being quite sneaky themselves, the French were no strangers to the drink, and had managed to smuggle their own seeds from Mocha to a small island off of Madagascar. Since attempts to grow coffee in France were unsuccessful, they quite happily received the Dutch gift, where it was planted in a garden in a special green house constructed by the French royal botanist.

It was Louis XIV’s secret desire that from the seeds from this tree would emerge France’s own coffee empire. His wish came true when he was able to develop French plantations in their colonies. Not only did his ambitious wish come true, but it flourished, becoming the ancestor for coffee currently grown in Central and South America.

Slavery and forced labor was the only viable way to meet the world’s insatiable demand for coffee.

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Photo by jakeliefer.