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here is my paper in its full uncut intirety enjoy folks
History of Coffee and Its
Problems
By Aaron Brockman
What product cant people live without before they go to work or cant function during their day that is a major driving factor to success in the world today? The answer is coffee. Some of you might wonder, Where did it come from? When did I start? How did it get to be so popular? That is what I am going to answer for you. I will explain the ramifications it has had on society over the past 400 to 500 years, how whole countries have been devoted to the coffee bean, and how it has shaped their world. Ultimately, how coffee has had such a profound impact on the world.
There is no exact date when coffee was found, but historians estimate it was in the 1400s. It first became a popular commodity in 1454, when the Ethiopians invaded Yemen. It was endorsed by the mufti of Aden, Sheik Germaleddin Abou Muhammad Bensaid. According to Muhammad, he could forty men and possess forty women. It was first thought to be a type of aid for a religious high and then evolved into an everyday use. People started Kaueh Kanes, which is the Arab word for coffee shop.
When it was found out that coffee houses were having gambling and unorthodox sexual activity the governor of Mecca used his power to shut the coffee houses down. The coffee shops were forcibly closed in 1511, with risk of punishment of being beaten for the first offense and for second time offenders you would be put in a bag, sewed up, and thrown into the sea for keeping one open. The ban didnt last long, though.
In 1536, coffee became an export business and the beans were exported from Yemen. They would take them to Alexandrian warehouses and then the French and Venetian merchants would pick what they wanted. But the seeds would not be allowed out of the country. A man named Baba Budan got 6 seeds out of the country and went to India to cultivate them. Then the Dutch got a hold of a tree in 1658, and started growing coffee in 1658.
Coffee first showed up in Vienna in July of 1683, when the Turkish troops were fighting with the Viennese troops. But, the Viennese didnt know what the 50 bags of black looking beans were. But a man in who lived in the Arab world for lots of years knew what they were and asked for them. A little while later he start his coffee shop called Blue Bottle which was the first coffee shop in Vienna. He was the first to strain out the grounds and put a big drop of milk in his coffee.
Coffee didnt get to Germany until the 1670s, and took a while to gain popularity. Not until 1721, did they have a coffee shop in every major city. In Germany it remained an activity for the upper class Germans. Not until 1731, did it become a drink for everyone instead of just the upper class. In 1777, Frederick the Great said, It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the like amount of money that goes out of the country in consequence. My people must drink beer. His majesty was brought up on beer, and so were his ancestors.
In four years, Frederick the Great banned coffee roasting. After awhile, the efforts to hold back coffee were lost and became the drink of gossip.
Coffee in England started at Oxford University in 1650. It was the first coffeehouse in England. Two years later, a man name Pasqua Rosee opened his coffee shop. He would go on to say in his ads that coffee cures headaches, coughs, gout, and stops miscarriages. In his ad he also proclaimed, It will prevent Drowsiness, and make one fit for business, if one had occasion to Watch; and therefore you are not to drink of it after Supper, unless you intend to be watchful, for it will hinder sleep for 3 or 4 hours. The Womens Petition (an organization that was against the consumption of coffee) was upset because coffee kept most men at the bar instead of at home. [The men stay out] until every one of them is as Drunk as a Drum, and then back again to the coffee-house to drink themselves sober.
Mens response was Coffee makes the erection more Vigorous, the ejaculation more full, adds a spiritualescency to the Sperm.
On January 10th, 1675, King Charles II was going to close down all coffee shops. It almost came to the monarchy being overthrown over coffee, but on January 8th, he lifted the ban on coffee, and soon coffee shops had taken over London. By 1700, there were over 200 coffee shops in London.
The first coffee shop in North America was in Boston in 1689. At that time, taverns and coffee shops were one and the same. However, by the 1700s it was proven that tea was the preferred choice. When the tea began to be taxed (ultimately resulting in the Boston Tea Party,) tea no longer was the drink of choice. Americans had decided to show the British that they were no longer like them, so they stopped drinking it. A bill was even passed by Congress stating that drinking tea was prohibited. John Adams wrote to his wife in 1774, Tea must be universally renounced, and I must be weaned, and the sooner the better. This made coffee shops boom with business.
Gaberel Mathieu De Clieu was the one who introduced coffee to the Latin world. He was given permission to take a coffee plant to Martinique, and once there, it became very prosperous. (To this day in fact, most of the coffee we drink comes from this plant.)
In 1727, Francisco de Melho Palheta was asked to be a mediator involving a dispute between the governors of the French and the governors of the Dutch While Francisco de Melho Palheta was staying with the delegates, he slept with the French representatives wife. When it came time for him to leave, his mistress gave him some flowers with coffee berries hidden in them. He took them home and planted them. It had soon spread southward.
Life on coffee plantations has greatly improved since the 1800s, but the life of an average plantation worker is by no means frivolous (depending upon the farm of course.) Here is a typical example of a farm in Costa Rica from a visitor to the island:
We came to a place where were workers harvesting the [coffee] cherries. There were many of the whole families, ranging from toddlers still unsteady walking, to seniors old enough to be grandparentsused woven baskets a couple of feet deep and a couple of feet across. They tied these around their waists with rope. They had to crouch down, or get on their knees to pick the cherries. They used both hands. The wage was one dollar per full basket. The people work from 5:30 in the morning until 6:00 at night, seven days a week...
There are no facilities, no toilets or running water in the fields, and the people must bring food and drink any everything they need, As they fill the baskets, they empty them into large woven plastic sacks. When the sacks are full, they carry them on their shoulders to a place in the field where there is an overseer and a scale. The overseer weights the cherries and pays the picker cash for them on the spot.
Many of these people were Nicaraguans who had, come legally and illegally, to Costa Rica for the coffee harvest. Others were Costa Ricans who worked part of the time harvesting bananas and part of the time harvesting coffee. This plantation, we were told, when in full swing, could employ as many as ten thousand pickers at a time. And the other, larger plantation, as many as thirty thousand.
Days are very long on a plantation and the pay is very low -- in some countries just a few dollars per day. Wages for coffee picking depend on the country. In Costa Rica (a very wealthy country), it may reach up to 30 dollars per day. On the low end of the scale, its a very different picture. For 96 percent of the workers in Madagascar, no pay is received for their work on the plantation. Instead, they are compensated with goods and services. Most small-scale farming operations are in a cycle of poverty. Their small levels of production limit their credit, which hinders their ability to pay their workers adequately. Countries that rely solely on coffee for their money (like El Salvador, where 90 percent of the economy is coffee dealings) are in a constant state of flux. They are continually going in and out poverty.
It was during these periods in 1932 that the exploited workers became fed up with the ways that they were being treated. The workers rose up against the coffee barons and their military henchmen. Unfortunately, this did not work, and because of their actions, they were brutally suppressed. The end result was a bloodbath in which Twenty-five thousand peasants were slaughtered in a single week This ultimately caused workers on coffee plantations to silence their opposition to the coffee regime in El Salvador for the following 50 years.
Brazil has been the leading contributor to the coffee marked for the last 30 years with 2.8 billion pounds of coffee produced in the 1990s. The second largest export of coffee comes from Colombia, where 1.8 billion pounds of coffee are produced. In order to keep the price of the coffee bean high, leading coffee distributors would burn surplus coffee beans. These practices kept the price of the coffee bean from falling low, and gave them a higher profit. During the depression and World War 2, Brazil burned more then 10 million pounds of coffee.
The burning centers that were created were called Pilhas de Incineracao. More then seventy-five of them were consistently burning over an eight-year period. These burning stations inhabited over a half of a square mile. They would put crude oil in with the beans, so the beans would be easier to burn. In 1931, more then twenty million bags of coffee were burned. In 1932 9 million bags were burned. The highest amount of burned coffee however came in 1933 when 30,000,000 bags of coffee were incinerated.
The destruction of coffee also took place in many other forms. They tried mixing coffee with molasses and feed it to cattle, but the cows didnt like it so that idea ultimately failed. They also tried to put coffee in volatile petroleum for use as fuel in locomotives. They also tried throwing the bags of coffee into the sea. They eventually discovered that the people gathered the coffee beans that washed up on to the beach and resold them.
They then hired chemists and scientists to work to find an another way to put this surplus of coffee to work. They found ways to press the coffee to get the oils out of them and make it into a heating source. While this idea showed promise, it eventually failed because it was too difficult to get all of the right chemicals to mix properly. They also found a new type of plastic from the coffee bean, which seemed promising. This new plastic made from coffee was called Caffelite, but nobody wanted to put money into the project, so this idea also fell through.
There was a lot of slavery in the 1700-1800s. Thousands of slaves were brought over every year by boat mostly to Rio and Brazil. As coffee grew more in popularity, slavery did as well. In 1825 26,254 slaves were brought in to work the fields. After coffees popularity began to take off, the number shot up considerably. In 1828, over 43,000 slaves were brought in and forced to the coffee fields. By 1828 there was over a million slaves in Brazil, which made up over a full third of the Brazilian population.
In 1831, a law was passed that said made slavery illegal. The law however, was never enforced. There was however a lot of pressure from the British to enforce the anti-slavery laws. Slave owners however saw that the end of slavery would eventually come, so they decided that they would get as much out of slavery as possible. With the time left, the companies increased the number of slaves being shipped from 20,000 annually to 50,000 in 1845, and all the way up to 60,000 in 1848. When the British battle ships started going after the Brazilian slave ships, they passed a law called Queiroz Law in 1885. The Brazilians put this law into action. It stopped the slave ships from docking. This law was enforced unlike earlier anti-slavery laws.
This is the description of coffee plantation visited by a Traveler in the Paraiba Valley in Brazil. The Negroes are kept under a rigid surveillance, and the work is regulated as by machinery. At four oclock in the morning all hands are called out to sing prayers, after which they file off to their workseven [P.M.] files move wearily back to the housethat all are dispersed to household and mill-work until nine oclock; then the men and woman are locked up in separate quarters, and left to sleep seven hours, to prepare for the seventeen hours of almost uninterrupted labor on the succeeding day.
Some plantation owners treated their slaves better then others, while others would force them into "private sadistic orgies". The slaves would be beaten and murdered on the plantation. The slaves would then be buried on the plantation so that the public wouldnt know of it, or have any record of it. One owner said, "I am the pope; Forming a link in the chain of animated beings between ourselves and the various species of brute animals. In 1880 it was said, "Brazil is coffee, and coffee is the Negro."
Coffee has had a major impact on the world ever since it was discovered in the Arab world. It affects many aspects of the environment, as many trees are cut down to make for coffee trees. Today alone, over 26.8 million acres are devoted to coffee. There have been a lot of problems with coffee in the past, but the same can be said about many other products in the world. We just need to go looking for the facts to find out the past. How long has the problem been going on? What can people do about the problem? These are the questions the public has a right to know.
As we have seen, the history of coffee has always been bleak. There has always been conflicts between those that harvest it and those that buy it. Blood has been spilled, and people have died to bring us this drink that is now a part of our everyday life. Tomorrow morning before you take your first sip of coffee, remember all that went into it. I know that I will never drink a cup of coffee the same way again.
Bibliography:
Kolpas,Norman. A Cup of Coffee. New York: Grove Press, 1993
Pendergast, Mark. Uncommon Grounds. New York: Basic Books, 1999
Dicum, Gregory, and Nina Luttinger. The Coffee Book. New York: The New York Press, 1990
Yarrington, Doug. A coffee Frontier. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997
History of Coffee and Its
Problems
By Aaron Brockman
What product cant people live without before they go to work or cant function during their day that is a major driving factor to success in the world today? The answer is coffee. Some of you might wonder, Where did it come from? When did I start? How did it get to be so popular? That is what I am going to answer for you. I will explain the ramifications it has had on society over the past 400 to 500 years, how whole countries have been devoted to the coffee bean, and how it has shaped their world. Ultimately, how coffee has had such a profound impact on the world.
There is no exact date when coffee was found, but historians estimate it was in the 1400s. It first became a popular commodity in 1454, when the Ethiopians invaded Yemen. It was endorsed by the mufti of Aden, Sheik Germaleddin Abou Muhammad Bensaid. According to Muhammad, he could forty men and possess forty women. It was first thought to be a type of aid for a religious high and then evolved into an everyday use. People started Kaueh Kanes, which is the Arab word for coffee shop.
When it was found out that coffee houses were having gambling and unorthodox sexual activity the governor of Mecca used his power to shut the coffee houses down. The coffee shops were forcibly closed in 1511, with risk of punishment of being beaten for the first offense and for second time offenders you would be put in a bag, sewed up, and thrown into the sea for keeping one open. The ban didnt last long, though.
In 1536, coffee became an export business and the beans were exported from Yemen. They would take them to Alexandrian warehouses and then the French and Venetian merchants would pick what they wanted. But the seeds would not be allowed out of the country. A man named Baba Budan got 6 seeds out of the country and went to India to cultivate them. Then the Dutch got a hold of a tree in 1658, and started growing coffee in 1658.
Coffee first showed up in Vienna in July of 1683, when the Turkish troops were fighting with the Viennese troops. But, the Viennese didnt know what the 50 bags of black looking beans were. But a man in who lived in the Arab world for lots of years knew what they were and asked for them. A little while later he start his coffee shop called Blue Bottle which was the first coffee shop in Vienna. He was the first to strain out the grounds and put a big drop of milk in his coffee.
Coffee didnt get to Germany until the 1670s, and took a while to gain popularity. Not until 1721, did they have a coffee shop in every major city. In Germany it remained an activity for the upper class Germans. Not until 1731, did it become a drink for everyone instead of just the upper class. In 1777, Frederick the Great said, It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the like amount of money that goes out of the country in consequence. My people must drink beer. His majesty was brought up on beer, and so were his ancestors.
In four years, Frederick the Great banned coffee roasting. After awhile, the efforts to hold back coffee were lost and became the drink of gossip.
Coffee in England started at Oxford University in 1650. It was the first coffeehouse in England. Two years later, a man name Pasqua Rosee opened his coffee shop. He would go on to say in his ads that coffee cures headaches, coughs, gout, and stops miscarriages. In his ad he also proclaimed, It will prevent Drowsiness, and make one fit for business, if one had occasion to Watch; and therefore you are not to drink of it after Supper, unless you intend to be watchful, for it will hinder sleep for 3 or 4 hours. The Womens Petition (an organization that was against the consumption of coffee) was upset because coffee kept most men at the bar instead of at home. [The men stay out] until every one of them is as Drunk as a Drum, and then back again to the coffee-house to drink themselves sober.
Mens response was Coffee makes the erection more Vigorous, the ejaculation more full, adds a spiritualescency to the Sperm.
On January 10th, 1675, King Charles II was going to close down all coffee shops. It almost came to the monarchy being overthrown over coffee, but on January 8th, he lifted the ban on coffee, and soon coffee shops had taken over London. By 1700, there were over 200 coffee shops in London.
The first coffee shop in North America was in Boston in 1689. At that time, taverns and coffee shops were one and the same. However, by the 1700s it was proven that tea was the preferred choice. When the tea began to be taxed (ultimately resulting in the Boston Tea Party,) tea no longer was the drink of choice. Americans had decided to show the British that they were no longer like them, so they stopped drinking it. A bill was even passed by Congress stating that drinking tea was prohibited. John Adams wrote to his wife in 1774, Tea must be universally renounced, and I must be weaned, and the sooner the better. This made coffee shops boom with business.
Gaberel Mathieu De Clieu was the one who introduced coffee to the Latin world. He was given permission to take a coffee plant to Martinique, and once there, it became very prosperous. (To this day in fact, most of the coffee we drink comes from this plant.)
In 1727, Francisco de Melho Palheta was asked to be a mediator involving a dispute between the governors of the French and the governors of the Dutch While Francisco de Melho Palheta was staying with the delegates, he slept with the French representatives wife. When it came time for him to leave, his mistress gave him some flowers with coffee berries hidden in them. He took them home and planted them. It had soon spread southward.
Life on coffee plantations has greatly improved since the 1800s, but the life of an average plantation worker is by no means frivolous (depending upon the farm of course.) Here is a typical example of a farm in Costa Rica from a visitor to the island:
We came to a place where were workers harvesting the [coffee] cherries. There were many of the whole families, ranging from toddlers still unsteady walking, to seniors old enough to be grandparentsused woven baskets a couple of feet deep and a couple of feet across. They tied these around their waists with rope. They had to crouch down, or get on their knees to pick the cherries. They used both hands. The wage was one dollar per full basket. The people work from 5:30 in the morning until 6:00 at night, seven days a week...
There are no facilities, no toilets or running water in the fields, and the people must bring food and drink any everything they need, As they fill the baskets, they empty them into large woven plastic sacks. When the sacks are full, they carry them on their shoulders to a place in the field where there is an overseer and a scale. The overseer weights the cherries and pays the picker cash for them on the spot.
Many of these people were Nicaraguans who had, come legally and illegally, to Costa Rica for the coffee harvest. Others were Costa Ricans who worked part of the time harvesting bananas and part of the time harvesting coffee. This plantation, we were told, when in full swing, could employ as many as ten thousand pickers at a time. And the other, larger plantation, as many as thirty thousand.
Days are very long on a plantation and the pay is very low -- in some countries just a few dollars per day. Wages for coffee picking depend on the country. In Costa Rica (a very wealthy country), it may reach up to 30 dollars per day. On the low end of the scale, its a very different picture. For 96 percent of the workers in Madagascar, no pay is received for their work on the plantation. Instead, they are compensated with goods and services. Most small-scale farming operations are in a cycle of poverty. Their small levels of production limit their credit, which hinders their ability to pay their workers adequately. Countries that rely solely on coffee for their money (like El Salvador, where 90 percent of the economy is coffee dealings) are in a constant state of flux. They are continually going in and out poverty.
It was during these periods in 1932 that the exploited workers became fed up with the ways that they were being treated. The workers rose up against the coffee barons and their military henchmen. Unfortunately, this did not work, and because of their actions, they were brutally suppressed. The end result was a bloodbath in which Twenty-five thousand peasants were slaughtered in a single week This ultimately caused workers on coffee plantations to silence their opposition to the coffee regime in El Salvador for the following 50 years.
Brazil has been the leading contributor to the coffee marked for the last 30 years with 2.8 billion pounds of coffee produced in the 1990s. The second largest export of coffee comes from Colombia, where 1.8 billion pounds of coffee are produced. In order to keep the price of the coffee bean high, leading coffee distributors would burn surplus coffee beans. These practices kept the price of the coffee bean from falling low, and gave them a higher profit. During the depression and World War 2, Brazil burned more then 10 million pounds of coffee.
The burning centers that were created were called Pilhas de Incineracao. More then seventy-five of them were consistently burning over an eight-year period. These burning stations inhabited over a half of a square mile. They would put crude oil in with the beans, so the beans would be easier to burn. In 1931, more then twenty million bags of coffee were burned. In 1932 9 million bags were burned. The highest amount of burned coffee however came in 1933 when 30,000,000 bags of coffee were incinerated.
The destruction of coffee also took place in many other forms. They tried mixing coffee with molasses and feed it to cattle, but the cows didnt like it so that idea ultimately failed. They also tried to put coffee in volatile petroleum for use as fuel in locomotives. They also tried throwing the bags of coffee into the sea. They eventually discovered that the people gathered the coffee beans that washed up on to the beach and resold them.
They then hired chemists and scientists to work to find an another way to put this surplus of coffee to work. They found ways to press the coffee to get the oils out of them and make it into a heating source. While this idea showed promise, it eventually failed because it was too difficult to get all of the right chemicals to mix properly. They also found a new type of plastic from the coffee bean, which seemed promising. This new plastic made from coffee was called Caffelite, but nobody wanted to put money into the project, so this idea also fell through.
There was a lot of slavery in the 1700-1800s. Thousands of slaves were brought over every year by boat mostly to Rio and Brazil. As coffee grew more in popularity, slavery did as well. In 1825 26,254 slaves were brought in to work the fields. After coffees popularity began to take off, the number shot up considerably. In 1828, over 43,000 slaves were brought in and forced to the coffee fields. By 1828 there was over a million slaves in Brazil, which made up over a full third of the Brazilian population.
In 1831, a law was passed that said made slavery illegal. The law however, was never enforced. There was however a lot of pressure from the British to enforce the anti-slavery laws. Slave owners however saw that the end of slavery would eventually come, so they decided that they would get as much out of slavery as possible. With the time left, the companies increased the number of slaves being shipped from 20,000 annually to 50,000 in 1845, and all the way up to 60,000 in 1848. When the British battle ships started going after the Brazilian slave ships, they passed a law called Queiroz Law in 1885. The Brazilians put this law into action. It stopped the slave ships from docking. This law was enforced unlike earlier anti-slavery laws.
This is the description of coffee plantation visited by a Traveler in the Paraiba Valley in Brazil. The Negroes are kept under a rigid surveillance, and the work is regulated as by machinery. At four oclock in the morning all hands are called out to sing prayers, after which they file off to their workseven [P.M.] files move wearily back to the housethat all are dispersed to household and mill-work until nine oclock; then the men and woman are locked up in separate quarters, and left to sleep seven hours, to prepare for the seventeen hours of almost uninterrupted labor on the succeeding day.
Some plantation owners treated their slaves better then others, while others would force them into "private sadistic orgies". The slaves would be beaten and murdered on the plantation. The slaves would then be buried on the plantation so that the public wouldnt know of it, or have any record of it. One owner said, "I am the pope; Forming a link in the chain of animated beings between ourselves and the various species of brute animals. In 1880 it was said, "Brazil is coffee, and coffee is the Negro."
Coffee has had a major impact on the world ever since it was discovered in the Arab world. It affects many aspects of the environment, as many trees are cut down to make for coffee trees. Today alone, over 26.8 million acres are devoted to coffee. There have been a lot of problems with coffee in the past, but the same can be said about many other products in the world. We just need to go looking for the facts to find out the past. How long has the problem been going on? What can people do about the problem? These are the questions the public has a right to know.
As we have seen, the history of coffee has always been bleak. There has always been conflicts between those that harvest it and those that buy it. Blood has been spilled, and people have died to bring us this drink that is now a part of our everyday life. Tomorrow morning before you take your first sip of coffee, remember all that went into it. I know that I will never drink a cup of coffee the same way again.
Bibliography:
Kolpas,Norman. A Cup of Coffee. New York: Grove Press, 1993
Pendergast, Mark. Uncommon Grounds. New York: Basic Books, 1999
Dicum, Gregory, and Nina Luttinger. The Coffee Book. New York: The New York Press, 1990
Yarrington, Doug. A coffee Frontier. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997