History of Coffee - 3. Some Coffee For Your Sugar
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Time to read 10 min
In part 1 and part 2 of this series, we followed coffee from its origin in Ethiopia, through the trade routes of the Islamic world, and into the hands of Dutch colonialists in Java.
Now we pick up where we left off as the French take suffering in the name of hot drinks to new extremes in the New World.
The Caribbean hadn't yet become the engine room of global slavery, but all the ingredients were there.
So we’re up to the 18th century with Indonesia, but we’re gonna rewind about a hundred years and run the French story from there . By the early 1600s the West Indies were already getting wild. Various European powers were scrapping for territory, killing and enslaving indigenous populations, importing enslaved Africans, generally just going for it trying to work out what could be extracted from the islands. It was violent, competitive and pretty fucking chaotic. The Caribbean hadn’t yet become the engine room of global slavery, but all the ingredients were there. (1)
Coffee wasn’t really a consideration when the French began acquiring territory in the Caribbean, it was all about sugar and military power. They first landed on Saint-Christophe (now St Kitts) alongside the British, and basically mashed the place up in violent competition with each other. And yeah, you guessed it, the indigenous Kalinago population were massacred, displaced or enslaved, then increasingly replaced by enslaved West African labour as the operation expanded. Then it was on to Martinique, where without the same British competition the French were able to expand the plantation model more effectively, trafficking greater numbers of Africans and forcing them into sugar cultivation. Sugar was making serious money, plantations were getting bigger, and the number of people being treated as property was growing with them.
Towards the end of the century they make a particularly grim bureaucratic move. In 1685 the French Crown introduces the Code Noir. You don’t have to be multilingual to translate it, and you don’t have to read a book to guess what it is. Basically, it’s a law that formally codifies slavery in their Caribbean colonies, including defining enslaved people as movable property - assets rather than humans. (2)
It’s not like it was the beginning of the slave trade, and it certainly wasn’t the first piece of legislation of its kind, but there was a picture of one of the documents in the book I read that really got me - it has this crude, almost blanked out, black face printed beneath the title, it’s just so fucking cold. (3)
(01) Code Noir ou Recueil d'Edits
Now the French had their extraction model patterned out - plantations, slaves, the Code Noir giving the horror increased legal legitimacy, what they lacked was the ability to scale. Then in 1697 the French “acquire” Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) from the Spanish. This is where the modern-day Dominican Republic and Haiti split.
The word acquired is doing some heavy lifting there actually. French settlers had been creeping into the western side of the island for decades, taking advantage of a mountainous jungle landscape that effectively made isolated islands of its different regions. Spain repeatedly tried to push them out, but lacked the resources and political will to maintain control of the west long term. Eventually they conceded the territory, and France suddenly had something much bigger to work with.
Saint-Domingue was fertile, relatively undeveloped, and could be easily shaped around the sugar plantation model the French had refined elsewhere in the Caribbean. They now had the space and the system to expand things dramatically. The timing could not have been bitter - yes that’s a pun not a typo - because just as France secured its largest Caribbean colony, coffee was about to arrive in the Americas, via a Dutch royal gift and some green-thumbed Parisian horticultural hobbyists.
You had a few plants taken out of Africa, then a few cuttings taken to Java, and from there an incredibly narrow lineage makes its way to Paris. The Dutch gifted the French a Typica cutting, which they cultivated in the Jardin du Roi at the turn of the 18th century. They managed to keep it alive, and from that tiny genetic base seeded Saint-Domingue and much of the Caribbean. When we’re talking about leaf rust, pest vulnerability, or just dead flavours, it’s important to consider just how tight this genetic bottleneck was, if only to celebrate growing diversity. (4)
Boom. Now it’s like full on, 12 years a slave, forced labour plantations growing coffee. West Africa is being ripped up, captive humans are moving one way, coffee and sugar are moving the other.
(02) Coffee plant (Coffee Arabica)
modern coffee is here, about half a million Africans are enslaved on Saint-Domingue plantations, Europeans are literally lapping it up.
1720-1780 sees the French dominate the market from Saint-Domingue, the Dutch monopoly is broken, and consumption expanded into a wider demographic. Now coffee supply becomes stable, with ships able to deliver from the colonies in under 10 weeks, madness when we consider the 9 months it took from the Dutch East Indies. Naturally the price drops to reflect supply, and for the first time coffee becomes widely accessible. (5)
This is the period when coffee becomes industrialised, and begins to resemble the commodity product we know and hate. The French weren’t so bothered about flavour diversity, but ultimately pushed things forward in terms of consistency and recognisability. The lower year-round humidity than Java, and shorter required storage time of the Atlantic crossing, allowed for more flexibility and innovation when it came to processing - The island was producing both washed and naturally processed coffees. (6)
All good, but you know what people are like, they wanted it to taste the same year round and weren’t bothered about which plantation it was from - so brainwave = blending. By the late-1700s, there’s clear record of coffee being graded and blended for consistency of flavour. You were no longer buying a unique exotic import, but a recognisable brand blended en masse at its port of delivery. Even the language changes, with descriptors like strong, bitter, mild, and reliable entering the associated vernacular.
So yeah, modern, familiar coffee is here, about half a million Africans are enslaved on Saint-Domingue plantations, Europeans are literally lapping it up.
Nothing lasts forever though, 1789 is where France goes mental.
I’d like to say that coffee caused the French revolution, but even for me that would be a reach. It is fair to say though, that the emergence of coffee houses, and the spread of consumption beyond the aristocratic elite, played a part in creating the conditions for it. Angry sober people up all night talking is a pretty tight precursor to national mobilisation, but this ain't Les Miserables, so let’s get back to the miserable colonies.
At the time of the French Revolution slaveholding in Saint-Domingue was at its peak. The island was a fucked up tapestry of different racial classes, which included nuanced levels of slavery, with some of the enslaved reaching positions of relative privilege through either luck or merit. Some of these “owned” people had access to education and relative freedom, while others spent their entire lives working plantations they could never leave.
Starting in 1791 the plantations of France’s coffee super-colony revolted.
Enter Toussaint Louverture - “The Black Spartacus” - and the end of French coffee dominance.
Born into slavery, Toussaint was a Creole African who cultivated the favour of the plantation owner who claimed him as property, a trust that carried him out of the fields and into a rare position of education and mobility. Through these experiences he came to identify strongly as a Frenchman.
The French Revolution was a time of upheaval for the administration and of deep contradiction in its colonial message: its new declaration of universal rights, one of the most comprehensive and formal statements of human rights to date, dramatically weakened the moral case for slaveholding.
For Toussaint, and for Saint-Domingue’s huge Black and mixed-race population, the contradiction was outrageous: apparently all men were born free and equal, just not here.
(04) General Toussaint Louverture
Starting in 1791 the plantations of France’s coffee super-colony revolted. Why should liberty and riotous revenge against the elites be preserved for a fatherland no slave was ever likely to see?
For the next three years the island burned and bled, with factional conflicts between racial and economic classes, shifting alliances and bloody battles fought over who would control the colony. Around 15,000 Black rebels are thought to have been killed in the initial suppression alone. Throughout this period Toussaint rose to become one of the revolution’s most important leaders, and eventually the dominant political and military figure on Saint-Domingue.
After three years of conflict slavery was abolished on Saint-Domingue, but the revolution would go on to be fought for another full decade. The Brits, Spanish, Americans and eventually Napoleon all got involved for their own reasons, making Toussaint’s time on top one of the messiest periods of colonial history. He didn’t exactly come through it unscathed either; by his own account he accumulated 17 wounds, carried a bullet permanently lodged in his hip, and took a cannonball to the face that knocked out most of his teeth. These crackers did not want a charismatic freed slave running one of the biggest and most valuable colonies in the Caribbean.
Toussaint wouldn’t live to see independence. The French captured him in 1802 and shipped him back to France, where he died in prison the following year. But the revolution carried on without him. The French were finally defeated in 1803, and on 1 January 1804 Saint-Domingue became independent Haiti, marking the only successful large scale slave revolution in modern history.
Coffee exports from the island never recover, and Toussaint doesn’t get the hero’s ending he deserves.
If you look at a map of the world today you can see just how wide France spread itself. Weirdly, it would be one of their smallest and most remote colonies that had the biggest impact on the genetics of the coffee we drink today.
Hold tight for Bourbon and La Reunion after we deal with Brazil.
(05) Toussaint in French custody
Part 4: Brazilliant?... Coming Soon.
When did the French start growing coffee?
The French began cultivating coffee in the Caribbean during the early 18th century, with coffee plants arriving in Martinique around 1720.
Cultivation subsequently expanded across French Caribbean colonies, particularly Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti), which became one of the world's largest coffee producers by the late 1700s.
How did coffee get to the Caribbean?
Coffee reached the Caribbean through European colonial trade and botanical exchanges.
The Dutch transported typica coffee plants from Java to Amsterdam, eventually gifting a plant to the French royal botanical gardens in Paris in 1714.
Coffee plants were subsequently transported to Martinique, traditionally associated with the French naval officer Gabriel de Clieu, helping establish the Typica lineage across the Americas.
Was coffee produced using slave labour?
Yes. In fact throughout the history of coffee it has been predominantly produced by slave labour of some description.
This Caribbean period marks a dark change though, where coffee is transported across the world, and enslaved people are trafficked to cultivate it.
Hundreds of thousands of Africans were forcibly transported to colonies such as Saint-Domingue, where they worked on coffee and sugar plantations. This exploitation helped European merchants produce coffee at an enormous scale and sell it to an expanding consumer market.
This is basically why we think we deserve cheap coffee as part of our daily routines today... because when it was introduced to Europeans as an accessible product, it was produced under slavery.
Why was Saint-Domingue so important to coffee history?
Saint-Domingue, now Haiti, became the world's leading coffee-producing colony during the late 18th century. Its fertile agricultural land, expanding plantation economy and extensive use of enslaved labour allowed French producers to dramatically increase coffee exports, helping make coffee a more affordable and widely consumed European commodity.
It's literally the start of coffee as we know it today.
How did the Haitian Revolution affect coffee production?
The Haitian Revolution began in 1791 with an uprising against slavery and French colonial rule.
Thirteen years of conflict devastated Saint-Domingue's plantation economy, disrupting coffee production and ending France's dominance of the global coffee market.
Haiti declared independence in 1804, becoming the first independent Black republic of the modern era.
Who was Toussaint Louverture, and what was his role in the Haitian Revolution?
Toussaint Louverture was a formerly enslaved military and political leader who became one of the central figures of the Haitian Revolution. He helped defeat foreign armies, consolidated control over Saint-Domingue and defended the abolition of slavery. Captured by French forces in 1802, he died in prison in 1803, shortly before Haiti achieved independence.
Jasper Dumas
Well I'm pretty far down the coffee rabbit hole, so far that I can see the other side. The other side is the context around coffee, and the shaft of light is a future where I never need to make another Flat White.
Sources
(1) Slave-based coffee in the eighteenth century and the role of the Dutch in global commodity chains - Tamira Combrink
Link
(2) BNF Americas - Code Noir
Link
(3) Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture. Sudhir Hazareesing
Link
(4) World Coffee Research - Typica
Link
(5) Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Istituto di Storia dell'Europa Mediterranea -
Really good pdf this one, all about Marseille becoming the new coffee port of Europe.
Link
(6) The Coffee Planter of Saint Domingue: P.J. Laborie
Link
Image Sources.
Header Image - Public Domain
Wikimedia Commons
Battle For Palm Tree Hill
(01) - Royaume de France, Libraires Associez - Public Domain
Code Noir
(02) - Coffee plant (Coffea arabica): flowering and fruiting stem with floral segments. Coloured engraving with etching by J. Miller, c. 1774, after S. Taylor. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection - Public Domain
(03) Wikimedia - Public Domain - musée du quai Branly - Port Au Prince
(04) Wikimedia - Public Domain - New York Public Library - Général Toussaint Louverture
(05) Wikimedia - Public Domain -Bibliothèque numérique Manioc - Toussaint au Fort de Joux
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