Coffee is a direct product of its colonial past. Colonialism is over, but a historically developed distribution of roles persists to this day. The coffee industry would do well to constantly question which relics of the past stubbornly remain. This requires a critical examination of history, accepting things, not downplaying anything, and improving communication.
I wince every time I walk past a shop and read “Colonial Goods” in large letters. What considerations led someone to still communicate with such a charged term today?
It's quite possible that it's about conveying one's own origins and the company's history to the outside world. It's also quite possible that it's about the products a shop still offers today, and by “Colonial Goods” it means what traditionally comes from far away, such as teas, spices, cocoa, and indeed, coffee. Another possibility is that it's an awkward and unreflected indulgence in nostalgia.
I stumble over the terminology because I lack the historical context, specifically in the present.
From one interpretation of the past, the term is commonplace – describing colonial goods in past times primarily as foodstuffs that did not come from Europe, meaning from "overseas." Notably, this also included countries that were not necessarily colonies anymore, but sovereign states.
An interpretation from the present would probably require an explanation of why the term is still being used. If this explanation is missing, one can quickly find oneself in a position of needing to argue, from which one must explain the sometimes romantic, innocent, and trivializing use. The coffee trade, coffee production, and the spread of coffee are a direct product of four centuries of colonialism and must be viewed with a keen eye.
And here we arrive at a key moment when we want to talk about coffee and its colonial past. We must always interpret terms, decisions, and actions within their historical context.
Costa Rica. Machinery used for husking and polishing coffee, UC Davis Library Digital Collections
The Role of Switzerland - a Non-Maritime Nation
Switzerland, for example, was not directly involved in the 17th-century slave trade, the "foundation of the Caribbean plantation economy" (p. 37, Jürgen Osterhammel), but it did provide ships to maritime powers like Portugal or Spain in the so-called triangular trade.
These, in turn, used them to transport enslaved people from West Africa to the Caribbean and South America to produce goods for the European market on plantations, which were then exported back on the same ships. In total, between the 15th and 19th centuries, more than 12 million people were abducted from Africa to the Americas – according to Jürgen Osterhammel, 1.5 million of them died during the notorious crossing. (p. 38)
Switzerland was not a seafaring nation, so it might not have been widely known that Switzerland was involved in a triangular trade. Today, we know what Switzerland's role (Zangger) in colonialism was, so we can no longer hide behind ignorance. (More on this in the podcast with Dominik Flammer)
"Reading from the times" today means: we know what happened in world history between about 1500 and 1975, but we no longer have any influence on it. However, we have a great influence on how we look back at this time, how we classify it, talk about it, draw our conclusions from it, and deal with the legacy more or less reflectively.
Even more – it is our responsibility to critically examine what has happened and to always ask ourselves whether we might even be perpetuating colonial structures in what we do?
We work with coffee – and for us, "coffee" is a broad term. When I say "coffee," I mean many things, not necessarily just a cup of espresso or a roasted bean, but the entire value chain: production, trade, processing, serving, and the way we talk about it.
Coffee is diverse. It holds a variety of stories from different regions of the world. This diversity also shows how much coffee challenges us. The history of coffee in Brazil, with its focus on the colonial past, is different from that in Mexico or Haiti.
If we want to communicate precisely and respectfully about the product and its history, we must understand the individual history of each coffee region. In this way, we can identify and understand potential colonial structures, translate them into the present, and question them.
On the subject: the podcast interview with Christian Cwik, historian at the University of Graz, on coffee, slavery, and colonialism
Colonial Structures in the Present
The largest coffee trading houses are based in Switzerland. As a rule, green coffee, not roasted coffee, is exported from a coffee-producing country and only "refined" in the destination country. Many large plantations in India and Brazil are still owned by the descendants of former colonial rulers. In regions like Chiapas in southern Mexico, with the recent history of the Zapatista uprising, it is still evident today that fault lines of colonialism play out along indigenous borders.
And when we look at the issue of poverty, it is producers who, as a rule, do not produce coffee at a cost-covering level, and coffee brands in the Northern Hemisphere that make a lot of profit from selling roasted coffee. There are reasons for these facts, and they are not accidental.
The "coffee system" is based per se on colonial structures.
Many of these have been mitigated or broken down over decades. However, fundamental, structural characteristics of the coffee industry are thoroughly colonial. In researching this blog, I was repeatedly amazed at how quickly I myself fell into a colonial thought trap. Thought patterns had become too ingrained, and I had questioned them too little.
Costa Rica, Thomas Forsyth Hunt, UC Davis Library, Digital Collections
When we drink coffee, we don't just drink a warm, brown beverage. Anyone who has ever been to a coffee farm knows the effect when they drink a cup of coffee at home for the first time again – the images of what they experienced flood their minds, and the cup becomes ever more colorful. This can also happen to us when we delve into the colonial history of coffee.
However, it does little good for oneself, for the past, or for interpreting the present to feel bad. On the contrary – it helps to bring conscious awareness to mind and to give even more appreciation to the people behind the coffee. At the same time, it sharpens our view of seemingly normal things, such as "colonial goods." We don't need to demonize the word, but it should irritate us – then we'll all be one step further in how we can think about coffee.
Coffee as an Export Product of Colonial Powers
Many products from subtropical agriculture were imported into Europe - spices, sugar, tobacco, indigo, cocoa - but coffee, since its arrival in the first urban coffee houses, had this mix of promise and forbiddenness, which made it so attractive to many.
Coffee is produced in more than 60 countries today. In all these countries, except for present-day Ethiopia and South Sudan, coffee was not originally a native plant but was introduced by the colonial powers. Administrators and missionaries were often the ones who planted coffee seeds in the subtropics.
In 1893, French missionaries are believed to have first planted coffee in the Taita Hills in Kenya. They likely brought their Bourbon variety coffee seeds from La Réunion.
The first producers in Kenya who consequently planted the coffee and called it "French Mission" were all settlers to whom land rights were granted by the colonial power Great Britain. (worldcoffeeresearch.org)
This example makes it clear: coffee did not simply spread on its own – which gives the entire discussion a passive role. Travelers, scientists, and merchants who belonged to a colonial power actively spread coffee by bringing seeds and plants to other continents by sea freight.
The goals were both economic exploitation and the botanical exploration of a previously unknown plant. It was primarily scientists from Holland, France, and Great Britain who took on the scientific investigation of coffee, focusing for a long time on its botanical typification.
Coffee Leaf Rust as a direct product of colonial expansion
However, the first coffee research institutions were established significantly later: in 1870 in Java, 1887 in Brazil, and 1896 in the Dutch East Indies. Until then, it apparently wasn't necessary to fundamentally investigate coffee for its behavior and diseases, because coffee producers – notably all colonialists or their appointed officials – could always increase production volume through deforestation and the use of cheap labor.
"as land remained cheap and plentiful, the simple but wasteful method of opening up new estates as soon as the old ones begin to be exhausted, seemed always preferable to an intricate and laborious study of the best means preserving land already under cultivation" (Stuart McCook, p. 31)
This changed abruptly with the first documented coffee rust outbreak in Ceylon in 1869. Coffee rust was previously unknown, appearing neither in present-day Ethiopia, the origin region for Arabica coffee, nor in Yemen, from where Dutch, French, and British had undertaken their voyages to Southeast Asia.
According to Stuart McCook, coffee rust must have developed in Ceylon and spread rapidly because the large estates were cultivated in monoculture and not separated by trees. The first massive rust wave was a direct product of European expansionist policies.
Land Dispossession and Enslavement
The cultivation of coffee in the new colonies usually involved the violent appropriation of land along with forced labor on the plantations. As Osterhammel writes about the colonial economy:
In many places in the overseas world, the conquerors first sought ways to make the indigenous rural population work for them. Complete enslavement of the natives almost never occurred for long periods, but other forms of unfree labor did occur almost everywhere. Characteristic of Spanish America in the 16th century was the allocation of indigenous laborers to private individuals by the crown, which was no less coercive and brutal than slavery. (p.81, Osterhammel)
Especially in more recent colonial history, Osterhammel continues, slavery and forced labor were replaced by the loss of access to land, which almost inevitably led to irreversible impoverishment. Land dispossession was directly supported by the colonial state, and settlers – such as the French missionaries mentioned – occupied land.
"The most fertile soils fell into foreign hands,"
Osterhammel continues, which fueled the territorial expansion of large haciendas until the early 20th century. Private, sprawling estates grew larger and larger, encroaching on the land of village communities and smallholders, which then led to the "marginalization of agricultural workers" (Osterhammel). If land was not seized, customs, traditions, and loose agreements were replaced by cadastres, field boundaries, and new property titles that imposed new ownership rights.
Specific, Colonial Histories
"Colonialism" is more present than ever today, especially when it comes to understanding one's own role in the world, as well as in the context of climate justice. The legacy of the past permeates the present in constantly emerging discourses about norms, concepts, or the underlying structures of the coffee industry.
Osterhammel on this again:
As a vanishing point for contemporary self-understanding, colonialism usually appears either in the form of concrete historical events or as a quasi-ahistorical concept for external determination, racism, white supremacy, and illegitimate appropriations.
On the one hand, there is the macro level, the bird's-eye view of how colonialism and coffee interact. I want to draw attention to these patterns, manifestations, and historical derivations here. On the other hand, there are countless micro levels, nourished by specific stories, that grow into a dense, larger whole.
Coffee and Colonialism in Historical Examples - from Jonathan Morris, Decolonizing the History of Coffee
Slave ships
There are stories of slave ships, such as the Leusden, a Dutch West India Company ship that sank en route to Suriname. On board were 680 women, men, and children from West Africa, who were to have worked on the coffee plantations. The sinking of the Leusden is the largest documented massacre during the transatlantic slave trade. Primarily people from West Africa were enslaved and used on plantations in South America. Suriname was responsible for half of the coffee consumed in Europe in the 1760s.
Haiti
Haiti was also one of the largest coffee producers before a war instigated by Napoleon and his subsequent defeat led to the declaration of independence in 1804. Haiti was never able to regain its former status as a major coffee producer—the infrastructure was devastated after the war, but according to Morris, another reason was that European buyers did not want to do business with a “Black Republic” that opposed Napoleon.
Haiti. Hand pulping machine for Coffee, Thomas Forsyth UC Davis Library, Digital Collections
Brazil
Brazil replaced Suriname and Haiti as the largest coffee producer. Settlers in Brazil and other Latin American countries produced increasing amounts of coffee in the 19th century, which led to new forms of exploitation, land appropriation, and forced labor. Previously uncultivated land was planted with coffee, and settlers were encouraged to privatize this land and displace the former inhabitants.
Mexico
In Chiapas, Mexico, the "Law of Colonization" came into effect in 1883, parcelling public lands into private units that were primarily sold to European and North American settlers. Indigenous people were often "hired" as workers on the farms – their journey, including provisions to the hacienda, was paid for, but once they arrived, they were indebted to the owners and had to work on the farm to repay that debt.
El Salvador
In El Salvador, there are good sources on haciendas' own currencies in the 19th century. The system of farm currencies, fichas de finca, was widely used in Latin America as a payment system for pickers. Workers lived on the hacienda, worked there, and were paid in the hacienda's own currency, which they could then use to shop in the stores on the hacienda itself. This closed system thus kept the workers economically captive on the hacienda, as they could not use their coins anywhere else.
What's next with this legacy?
Stories about colonialism and coffee must always be told specifically for better contextualization. We can get a sense of an era spanning several hundred years, but individual stories help us to better understand the past and the present.
We can also read colonial history through a coffee lens. In this article, we cannot condense 400 years of colonialism, but we can highlight that we should also look at history from a coffee perspective.
Because structural characteristics still exist in the coffee world today that are closely intertwined with coffee's colonial history. We have, in some cases, become so accustomed to them that we hardly question what is given anymore.
The Coffee Exchange
- Today, as in the past, the prices for green coffee are mostly determined where no coffee grows: on the futures exchanges in New York and London
- exchange prices do not reflect production costs but rather show supply and demand
- the real production costs are not reflected in the current system. However, efforts to establish regional minimum prices are slowly gaining traction, e.g., the discussion about regional FOB prices by Fairtrade
Large Farms, Land Ownership, and Labor
- Farms that are large today were already large in the past, or were able to grow because they had better basic conditions. For example, the mostly colonial owners were granted land rights that were denied to the indigenous people
- often, in large so-called estates in Brazil, Central America, and until the 19th century in the Caribbean, the owners themselves belonged to the colonial power, or these settlers from the country of origin were promised land
Good green coffee is exported, inferior green coffee remains in the coffee country.
- even in coffee-producing countries, there is a growing demand from a clientele for good coffee, so that more and more good green coffee remains in the producing country
- however, the lion's share of good green coffee leaves the country. "Every coffee has a home" is often heard, and so, ironically, it has almost become self-perpetuating that inferior coffee has become the standard in the exporting country
Coffee is "refined" in the receiving country
- as a rule, roasteries purchase green coffee and roast it where it is consumed
- today, however, all technical prerequisites are met to roast coffee well, reliably, and qualitatively in the producing country
- shipping times can also be kept short
- thus, the argument that coffee must be roasted in the target market itself to guarantee freshness is outdated
- arguments such as time-to-market, quick reaction to unforeseen events, and delivery costs and emissions, however, speak against this
- concepts such as Moyee, Coffee Annan, or Desarrolladores de Café etc. show how efficiently and effectively coffee can be roasted at the origin
Cheap coffee primarily requires two things: cheap labor and maximum efficiency.
- Roasted coffee in Central Europe has only become slightly more expensive, considering inflation over the last 30 years, while production costs in all coffee-producing countries have multiplied.
- Where maximum efficiency drives down prices (Brazil), labor is more expensive than, for example, in Nicaragua, where labor is significantly cheaper. However, the trend is slowly but surely emerging in Central America: laborers who previously worked seasonally on coffee farms are leaving their homes and migrating north.
- In northern Guatemala, for example, pickers leave their homes to pick in Mexico. They earn minimally more, but lose that income again when exchanging currency upon their return. Why do they still do it? Because they get food on the farms, whereas they would starve in Guatemala. On my last trip to Mexico in October 2022, I learned a lot about this from Ensambles Café.
The Burden of Logos
Even in the recent past, brands have had to revise their logos to keep up with the times. Julius Meinl, for example, only changed its well-known logo in 2004, where a small "Moor" was colored red.
Source: Citybee
As recently as spring 2021, I saw this logo in Florence, which had probably been around for years, and the operators saw no reason to change it yet.
So now what? What should we do?
Stay calm.
Don't demonize anything.
But become more sensitive, re-examine our own history and that of coffee companies again and again, and ask these two simple questions for a quick colonialism check:
Is the action and/or inaction of a practice contemporary?
Does it need correction? If so, for whom, and what does it entail?
We must regularly examine our own history and always keep in mind whether our way of thinking is shaped by old patterns. Coffee would probably have developed differently without European expansionist policies. Now it is up to us, with an honest look at the past, to shape the future of coffee for the better.
A selection of literature used
Coffee & Colonialism, Erika Koss
Decolonizing Coffee, Jonathan Morris
Colonialism, Jürgen Osterhammel
Stuart McCook, Coffee is not forever
All photos in black and white: https://digital.ucdavis.edu/search/forsyth/%5B%5D//10/
