Coffee: The Epic of a Commodity

by H. E. Jacob

  One who speaks of coffee in Brazil, of the last half-century of coffee-growing there, is compelled to use words and images that in other respects seem only appropriate to the taming of natural forces.

  In 1926, the Brazilian government celebrated the bicentenary of the introduction of coffee-piantine into Brazil. The fixing of the date of the latter event by the choice of the year 1726 was somewhat arbitrary.

  It seems probable that all the coffee-plants on the South American continent are descendants of the famous shoot brought by Lieutenant Desclieux from France to Martinique. We know for certain that Desclieux’s voyage took place in 1723. Since, as aforesaid, there are four barren years after coffee has been planted, we can hardly suppose that coffee-planting can have begun in Brazil before 1728.

  By that time, the Dutch were planting coffee in South America. These plantations were in Dutch Guiana. Eastward of Dutch Guiana lay French Guiana, and the two colonies were so jealous of each other that the governors forbade, under pain of death, the export of coffee-berries. A foolish prohibition, since coffee, the “wonderful shrub,” was already being grown in Guiana under both the Dutch and the French flags.

  Still, the prohibition had some sense as against third parties. Except for the French and the Dutch, no one was to grow coffee on the American continent. At this juncture, by a strange chance, when there was a dispute between the French and the Dutch as to the delimitation of their respective territories, they called in a Brazilian to adjudicate, an official from Para, Palheta by name. This gentleman made love to the wife of the governor of French Guiana. At a banquet, under the eyes of her unsuspecting husband, she gave Palheta a huge bouquet, in whose interior a handful of ripe coffee-berries was concealed. Thus Palheta was able to evade the prohibition on export, and to sail off with his treasure to the mouth of the Amazon, where the coffee-berries were planted, and flourished abundantly.

  Such is the Brazilian saga. For those who are romantically inclined, the value of coffee is naturally enhanced by the thought that its introduction to Brazil was effected in so gallant a fashion. The only demonstrable fact, however, is that coffee-planting in Brazil began at Para, and spread thence southward.

  Long before this, in the Far East, in Java and Indonesia, the Dutch had dispossessed the Portuguese. By one of time’s revenges, it was a Portuguese—for Brazil was then a Portuguese colony—who tapped a main source of Dutch wealth by transferring coffee from Surinam to Portuguese territory. Thenceforward, coffee began “to talk Portuguese.”

  The southward march of coffee from Para to what is now the heart of the coffee-country, the plateau of São Paulo, took more than fifty years. That was a long time, even when we take into consideration how vast are the distances in Brazil. In truth, the Brazilians were not in a hurry to set about coffee-planting. Brazil cultivated sugar-cane, and in such enormous quantities as to dictate to the world sugar-market. During the eighteenth century it was sugar that “talked Portuguese.”

  Then a comet appeared in the skies of the sugar-world. It was Napoleon, whose campaign against the British carrying trade took the form of an endeavour to make the European continent independent as regards sugar-production. The reader will remember that Napoleon had luck in this matter, being able to turn the Prussian discovery of sugar in beet-root to account for the promotion of his Continental System. Therewith cane sugar was dethroned, and Brazil could no longer maintain her place as premier producer of sugar in the world. Since, however, Napoleon’s “alliance with chicory” was a comparative failure—because neither chicory nor any of the other suggested coffee-substitutes grown in the temperate zone contained a trace of caffeine—the Brazilians were quick to realize that they must replace sugar-growing by coffee-growing. Like so many other salient facts of the nineteenth century, the almost exclusive devotion of Brazil to coffee-growing was the outcome of Napoleon’s activities. It was an indirect answer to his economic policy.

  Prior to the establishment of the Continental System, Brazil’s export of coffee was so small that not until 1818 do we find any statistical references to Brazil as a coffee-producing country. In that year, Brazil marketed seventy-five thousand sacks. More than five and a half million kilograms of coffee were being shipped to Europe from various parts of the world, and only the intrigues of speculators prevented a crash in the price. Not until 1823 did the Brazilian harvest begin seriously to affect European prices of coffee, when the coffee exchanges were taking advantage of the imminence of war between France and Spain to bear the market.

  Now everyone in Europe who was interested in coffee knew that Brazil had to be taken into account.

  There were three factors that combined to promote the victory of Brazil as a coffee-producing country: the soil, the form of government, and local labour conditions.

  Coffee in Brazil was, for the most part, planted on virgin soil, where the humus was rich and porous, favoured by many centuries of tropical sunshine. The planters, attended by their slaves, made their way into the primeval forests, felled the huge trees with axes, and, with billhooks, cleared away the lianas with which the living tree-trunks and the dead were ensnared. Day after day the forest resounded to the noise made by the invaders, until, on the selected area, not a tree was left standing. The waist-high stubble of undergrowth, over which brightly coloured butterflies fluttered and amid which spotted orchids gleamed, rotted and dried week after week beneath the burning sun. Even the snakes fled into the shade of the surrounding uncleared forest. They sensed the imminent “roça,” the burning, and fled from the peril.

  When the felled tree-trunks had been sufficiently sunned, the roça began. The fires that were lighted consumed the tree-trunks and the stumps, with the exception of specimens of one particular tree which the Indians named the “iron tree.” Its blue-black wood was resistant to fire. All the rest, however, were destroyed, leaving the newly cleared land covered with a layer of silvery ashes. Ghastly was the aspect of this grey clearing, surrounded on all sides by the imperishable forest. In that damp, hothouse atmosphere, the unfelled titans were immune to forest fires.

  The ashes were cleared away, and coffee was planted in a procreative volcanic soil admirably suited to it. It flourished abundantly. Soon a neighbouring area of forest shared the fate of the first.

  Through a region extending over more than twenty degrees of latitude, from Para on the equator to São Paulo on the tropic of Capricorn, the devouring roça did its work. With planned conflagrations, the way was prepared for coffee-planting.

  In this long-enduring campaign on behalf of coffee against the primeval forest, the colonists soon learned how to find the best sites for their plantations. Among the trees which showed that the soil would be favourable the most notable were the white cedar, the wild white fig-tree, the white palm, and the heliocarpus. The most fruitful region was the plateau of São Paulo. It soon came to be called the “terra roxa,” the red earth, although its colour was rather chocolate than red. Often, here, one can walk for miles across loam that looks as artificial as freshly ground cocoa. At sunset the earth shines with a violet light which, though reflected, looks as if it emanated from the soil.

  In São Paulo, coffee-planting speedily became a science. The seed was taken only from the best plants. Then the first planting was made in nurseries, where the young shrubs were allowed to grow to the height of a foot or two before they were transplanted to their permanent site. They were spaced out at distances of twelve feet, so that they should not rob one another of light. Manuring and weeding were very carefully attended to.

  The terra roxa, an earth rich in humus, containing much nitrogen, phosphoric acid, lime, and potash, is of recent volcanic origin, produced by the disintegration of basalt and trachyte. It yields abundant harvests. The variety of chemicals withdrawn during the growth of the coffee-shrub is restored when the husks fall. Thus the land is inexhaustible.

  The climate as well as the soil has contributed to make of Brazil the principal coffee-growing country in the world. C
limatic conditions are so favourable that the coffee-shrubs could thrive without care. Even the shade-trees which, in other lands, are required for the protection of young coffee-plants, are needless in Brazil. The peculiar cloudiness of the atmosphere mitigates the drying effect of the sun. Above all, rain is frequent without being excessive, so that the trees have a sufficiency of water all the year round.

  Once Brazil had entered the lists as a coffee-growing country, its competition was irresistible. Local labour-conditions were favourable, no less than soil and climate. Down to 1888, slavery persisted in Brazil. Even today, one who lands at Bahia, can, in an afternoon’s walk, make the acquaintance of many old Negroes who, half a century ago, still worked in chains.

  The slaves were imported from the west coat and from the east coast of Africa. Indisputably, the slave-trade and slave labour are the most odious and most cruel of all economic forms. Still, it cannot be denied that a Negro slave in Brazil was in many respects better off than a Negro, bound or free, in Anglo-Saxon countries. For—this is the important point—the Portuguese are free from race prejudice. The colonists brought few of their own womenkind with them to Brazil, and cohabited unrestrainedly with Indians and Negro women, so that, in the course of four centuries, the population of Brazil has come to consist largely of half-breeds. In a society so constituted, although the Negro was a slave, he was not as such despised. When he came to live in a town, he was comparatively well-off. His lazy master used him to earn money. The slave was not set free, but his servitude was a light one; the Negro became a handicraftsman, an inn-keeper, a stone-mason, a policeman. He had to hand over a percentage of his earnings to his master, but could keep the rest for himself.

  It was only on the great plantations that the Negroes had an evil time. Even there, however, the self-interest of the planters checked excessive exploitation. Cruelty, beyond limits, would have recoiled upon their own heads. The slave-owners were enormously outnumbered; they could not have resisted a serious slave-rising, for the central government was far away. Moreover, miscegenation was rife. A planter had, as a rule, so many illegitimate children that the Negro families were allied to him in a way that prevented the extremity of mutual hatred between master and slave.

  There were also many methods of emancipation, and widespread jobbery served to mitigate the hardships of a slave’s life. All the same, there were hardships enough. For certain forms of labour, among which labour upon the plantations is one, the toil of slaves is cheaper than the toil of freemen. The long persistence of slavery in Brazil gave that country an irresistible advantage over its competitors.

  In the end, the economic system, successful though it was, was changed with amazing suddenness. By one stroke of the pen, the emperor of Brazil, Pedro II, freed all the slaves. He was dethroned by a republican revolution next year, but emancipation held its ground.

  The earlier revolution, thanks to which in 1822 Pedro I had become emperor of Brazil, making himself independent of Portugal, was traceable, like all the earlier revolutions of the nineteenth century, to the influence of Napoleon. In fact, Napoleon, indirectly at least, wrought changes in North and South America no less extensive than those he effected in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Everywhere the nations were magnetically transformed by his existence, now attracted and now repelled.

  When his star was setting, the revolutionary wave, of which his rise to power had been the symbol, spread to America. In North America, revolution triumphed before the days of Napoleon. A French enthusiast, Lafayette, had fought on behalf of the American revolution. In the year of Napoleon’s death, the republicans of Spanish America were fighting for freedom. The spirit of the Holy Alliance, which had conquered Napoleon, would not tolerate new republics anywhere upon the globe. Metternich was dreaming of intervention; the tsar was equipping a fleet which was to land at La Plata. Thereupon the spirit of Napoleon was resurrected in the Congress of the United States of America. In the eventful year 1823, only two years after Napoleon’s death, was formulated the famous Monroe Doctrine, according to which no European intervention would henceforward be tolerated in America.

  Even more remarkable than the revolt of the Spanish colonies was the way in which Portugal lost Brazil. This huge dominion had been fairly well governed. The ties between the various “captainates” and Lisbon had not been drawn too close. There had never been any such dispute as that between Britain and the North American coastal states. But there came a turn of events that was altogether unexpected, and was eminently calculated to inflate the Brazilians’ sense of self-importance.

  In November 1807, Junot, one of Napoleon’s marshals, captured Lisbon, and literally drove the Portuguese royal family into the sea. They took refuge on British warships, which sailed with them to Rio. Thus Brazil became personally acquainted with its Portuguese rulers, who at a distance had been so greatly admired, but were now somewhat discredited refugees. Portugal had temporarily ceased to exist. Brazil had become Portugal.

  The inevitable result was that the court of John VI became permeated with Brazilians. The colonists demanded rights, and the king had no option but to grant them. Hitherto, none but Portuguese ships had been allowed to enter Brazilian ports. Now, when the laws of Portugal had become visionary, Brazil insisted on being entitled to trade on equal terms with all friendly nations. The king, glad to have been able to find asylum from the Napoleonic storms in this great colony, agreed further, in the year 1815, that Brazil was to be regarded as a kingdom.

  The Portuguese revolution of 1820 compelled John VI to return to Europe. He left his son Dom Pedro behind him in Brazil as regent. Pedro, who understood the signs of the times, and wished to save the dynasty in America, severed the ties between Brazil and Portugal, and had himself crowned emperor on September 7, 1822. Had he not done this, he would doubtless have been expelled as the Spanish proconsuls were expelled from Argentina.

  The establishment of a Brazilian empire was a clever move. Nevertheless, Brazil was a difficult country to rule. There were frontier disputes with the republics which had at one time been provinces of Spain, and there were antagonisms between the different parts of Brazil, often taking the form of open hostilities. The huge realm extended from north to south across thirty parallels of latitude. It contained almost all kinds of vegetation, and its inhabitants were of every tint of skin.

  In 1831, Pedro I abdicated in favour of his son Pedro, a little boy of five. During the child’s minority, Brazil was governed by regents; his majority was proclaimed on July 23, 1840, and he was crowned on July 18, 1841. Pedro II was an able, indeed, a wise ruler. This second—and last—emperor of Brazil was among the most notable and attractive personalities of the nineteenth century.

  “An Athenian in South America,” Pedro II cultivated the arts and sciences, and began to have Rio laid out as one of the most beautiful cities in the world. He established a strictly federal constitution, which flattered the vanity of Rio without affronting that of the widely separated parts of the realm. Traders and industrialists idolized Pedro. He built roads and railways, “because coffee must have an exit to the sea.” Before his enterprises were fulfilled, the crops had been transported by teams of oxen, but now coffee could be shipped within a very few days after having been harvested. The Brazilian coffee-barons could make the best possible use of their cheap labour. The value of the exports from Brazil vied with that of those from any other country in the world.

  His idealism and his culture played Emperor Pedro a trick. To this poet upon an imperial throne, this corresponding member of European academies, translator of Sully Prudhomme, Victor Hugo, and Longfellow, coffee had an exceptionally bitter taste, which was given to it by slavery. Emancipation? He ventured to lay an axe to the stem which sustained the economic life of the country.

  In 1871 he promulgated the “lei do ventre livre,” the “law of free birth.” It ordained that no one could any longer be born to slavery in Brazil; the children of slaves were free. The practical effect of this would be that by 19
00, when the older slaves would be dying off rapidly, slavery would be in course of extinction, slowly at first, then swiftly. The coffee-planters could adapt themselves to what was, after all, a distant prospect, without any immediate and grave disturbance of labour conditions upon their estates. But there were revolutionists at headquarters who considered that the proposed method of emancipation was too slow. When the emperor was visiting Europe for the sake of his health, in 1888, his daughter Izabel, who was acting as regent, promulgated the “lei aurea,” the “golden law,” whereby slavery was abolished forthwith, completely, and without compensation to the planters. These latter, not being in a position to pay adequate wages to their ex-slaves, rebelled against the emperor. Hitherto they had been loyal monarchists, full of respect and admiration for the man to whom they owed their roads and railways; but now, in their despair, they joined forces with the republicans. Army officers collaborated in the revolt, and on November 15, 1889, the Brazilian empire fell. Pedro, who had by now returned, was forced into exile. When the telegraph conveyed the news to other American capitals, the president of Venezuela, Rojas Paul, uttered the memorable words: “They have done away with the only republic that existed in America, the Brazilian empire!”

  The planters did not venture upon the re-establishment of the slave-holding system. Still, they got out of their difficulties quickly enough. Nothing was needed to overcome the labour crisis but intensified immigration from Europe.

  Slave-labour had been cheap, but it had been of poor quality. You cannot see more than a few paces in a coffee-plantation, and, when they were not under the eyes of the overseer, the Negroes took things easy. The planters had long known that European free labourers, though costly, worked much better than Negro slaves.

  Heinrich Schüler, who has made a special study of the question, estimates that from 1820 down to the present day about six million persons have migrated to Brazil. He believes that fourteen millions of the population—nearly two-thirds of the total—consist of immigrants or the descendants of immigrants who have come to Brazil during the last hundred years. But from year to year the number of immigrants varied much, just as did their fortunes. While slavery was still in being, the free whites generally worked on the system known as metayage, receiving as their wages half the crops of the land they tilled. Thus the white immigrant was not a slave, but neither was he a free landowner, and he was therefore in an inferior social position. Metayage soon led to exploitation of the colonists, and the stream of immigration fell off. Von der Heydt’s decree, issued in the year 1850, forbade Germans to emigrate to Brazil. This had important political consequences, for it directed German emigration towards the United States.