Coffee: The Epic of a Commodity

by H. E. Jacob

  A good deal of their work obviously must be calculations, to ascertain how much coffee, during the next few weeks, had to be shovelled into bonfires or dumped into the sea. Fire and water were of equal importance as destroyers of the glut. Clerks were also drawing up plans for commercial treaties, organizing a system by which coffee could be exchanged for imports: for North American wheat, for coal from the Ruhr and German manufactures, for electrical machinery from Austria, for whatever Turkey could export—but the most dependable partners of these regulators of the coffee-market were two of the four primary elements, fire and water.

  When I got back to the hotel, a queer type of fellow was awaiting me. Long and lean as Don Quixote, he was clad in white tropical raiment, which was however both ravelled and soiled. This was unusual here, for anyone who has pretensions to be a “gentleman,” since the majority of such buy their coats and trousers by the dozen and put on a clean suit every morning.

  “Good day to you,” said this phenomenon in my native tongue. “I speak German, for my mother was German. My name is Gonçalves.” Short pause, while he waited for me to reply. Since I said nothing, he went on: “My name is Simone Gonçalves, lieutenant-colonel on half pay.”

  I bowed. “What can I do for you?”

  “The hotel porter, who is an acquaintance of mine, told me of your arrival. Is it true that you contribute to the newspapers over there?”

  Over there. He uttered the words in a tone like that in which many people in Europe are apt to pronounce the name of America—in a tone of envy and respect. The tone made me prick up my ears.

  “Won’t you take a seat, colonel?”

  “I’d rather stand,” said he, “if you don’t mind.” He flushed a little. “I should probably get up again very soon.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, and continued speaking furtively, almost in a whisper: “I have reason to suppose that you are being misinformed. All the Europeans who come here are humbugged. I suppose they have told you that the government is destroying twelve million sacks of coffee every year. Let me assure you, sir, that that is untrue. The government does not destroy six million, barely two million.”

  “I don’t understand . . .” I murmured.

  He looked at me with a distressful expression: “Let me tell you the facts. The coffee is secretly shipped away. It is simply stolen by the government; by these . . .”—vainly he sought a term of abuse strong enough for his liking—“who subsequently speculate with it!”

  By this time I realized that my visitor was a lunatic. His delusion played with him as strings pull the limbs of a puppet. For a moment every nerve in him, every muscle, seemed to be twitching. He swallowed two or three times. Then he grew calmer, and sat down, unbidden.

  “I see that you don’t believe me. Of course I cannot prove what I am telling you; but you can see, at least, how probable it is that some hanky-panky is going on. Otherwise the government would not have recourse to so unserviceable an instrument as fire. . . .” He searched his pockets, produced a notebook, a corkscrew, a couple of handkerchiefs. His hands flew from one part of his coat to another, but he could not find that of which he was in search.

  “I used to be a planter. In one of the years when prices fell almost to nothing, I was ruined, had to discharge my workers, and quit. My nearest neighbour, a fellow from Alagoas, bought my estate for a song. Now he goes on growing my coffee.” The poor fellow stared thoughtfully into vacancy.

  “Coffee is our national misfortune in Brazil. The government does not play straight. It is in league with the rich planters. Ah, here it is!” he said triumphantly. “It” was a small pasteboard box with a glass cover. He handed this to me, and a magnifying-glass as well.

  “That is the broca do café.”

  “The coffee-borer?” I asked. “A noxious beetle, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it made its first appearance about ten years ago. In the Campinas district alone it has destroyed a hundred thousand coffee-trees. But that is far too few, nothing at all.”

  “I have heard of it,” said I, “and I have also been told what strong measures have been taken to fight the pest. I understand that every plantation has a disinfection-outfit provided at the cost of the state.”

  My interlocutor laughed scornfully, and said: “Senhores Lopes de Oliveira and Antonio de Queiroz Telles, two famous coleopterists, have actually prepared a motion-picture to warn everyone against the broca.”

  The story of the ruin of the plantations in Ceylon came into my mind. There have been great advances during the last fifty years. Means of defence are put into operation far more quickly. My thoughts wandered. As if from a great distance I heard the colonel saying: “Nothing should be done to resist the onslaught of the broca. If the government really wants to save the country, it will take up loads of the eggs of this beetle in airplanes, and strew them far and wide over the plantations.”

  “You don’t say so!” I interposed, rising.

  Stuttering in his haste, he said: “Let me beg you to write about this matter when you return to Europe.”

  Turning the door-handle to usher him out, I replied: “Certainly I will do what you ask.”

  The night-train to Rio was scheduled to start at ten o’clock. It was known as the “Cruzeiro do Sul,” the Southern Cross. Its bright blue carriages revived memories of taking train to the Riviera. Soon I was on my way back towards the Atlantic, to Rio the hothouse, whence you see the sun rising out of the sea. We passed through Taubaté, where, in 1906, the three state presidents met in council. I asked the attendant to call me when the train reached Tuba Ton, at which place rocks and palm-trees begin.

  As noon struck, I drove to Independencia Park, to see the monument to the independence of Brazil. It consists of stone figures of goddesses, warriors, and symbols of one sort and another. A pair of Indians in feathered robes participate in the commemoration of liberty. The whole is eloquently decorated with Portuguese inscriptions.

  I sat down upon a bench at a convenient distance, gazing at the monument. My thoughts turned to Gonçalves, the lunatic who had called on me the previous day; and to what he had in his pocket.

  Well, what had I got in my pocket? A coffee-twig! I had snapped it off one of the shrubs in Alves de Lima’s plantation. I was keeping it as a memento. It bore a few withered flowers and some fruits.

  Of all the wealth of coffee in the world, I owned no more than this twig. Nor should I ever own more than this, being neither planter nor merchant, neither speculator nor dealer, nor with talent for any of these professions. I had nothing but my vision of them all, and perhaps a gift for expression.

  I was no more than a consumer; and, when I wanted to drink coffee, I had to pay for it like anyone else in the world.

  The notion was so comical that I burst out laughing.

  How strange! I picked a berry and pierced it with one of the blades of my pocket-knife. The outer envelope through which the point passed was what is called the epicarp. The next wrapping was the endocarp. Then came the pulp; then the silver-skin; then two seeds, grown together by their bellies, like Siamese twins. Inside all that I could dissect there was a kernel, that was certain. But what was the innermost nucleus of this kernel? An incomprehensible mystery, which no botanist could unravel.

  I sat there like a sportive boy. I was holding something sticky between my fingers. The dissected coffee-berry looked at me and hypnotized me. A day-dream took possession of me.

  I seemed to be making my way up a river, a very wide river, so wide that the farther bank was invisible. Nor could I make out the nature of the fluid in this river, except that it was yellow, and flowed swiftly. But the first dam that I saw was unquestionably the Murray scheme; and the second dam, over which the current flowed irresistibly like Niagara, was the Defesa policy. Above this the stream narrowed somewhat, so that I could see the farther bank. I made my way to a very early dam, and read on it the words “Convenio di Taubaté.” This was the valorization of the year 1906. Now the channel narr
owed yet more. I was no longer following up the course of a river, but was tracing back a current of human history; was studying well-known happenings, ranged in series. I saw towns full of coffee-houses, Napoleon’s Continental System, Frederick the Great, old Paris and Versailles where dwelt Louis XIV, old Leipzig and Johann Sebastian Bach. On the flat shores of the Upper Adriatic stood Venetians wearing dominoes. Marseille appeared, capped in the baroque fashion by a huge wig, proper to a seventeenth-century physician. To the left lay the port of Amsterdam, whence the high-pooped sailing-ships set forth towards the East Indies; and London, where, beneath the shadow of St. Paul’s, coffee had begun its fierce campaign against beer and brandy.

  On the horizon lay Vienna, besieged by the Turks. The tower of St. Stephen’s, with its fine traceries, rose into the sunshine above the smoke of artillery. Then I followed up the stream—yes, it was still a stream—to Constantinople, across the Bosporus into Asia Minor, and farther on into a fabled Araby. While my nostrils were assailed by a familiar aroma, I heard in my dream the voice of the old sheikh Abd el Kader:

  O Coffee, thou dispersest sorrow,

  Thou art the drink of the faithful,

  Thou givest health to those who labour,

  And enablest the good to find the truth.

  O Coffee, thou art our gold!

  There, where thou art offered,

  Men grow good and wise.

  May Allah overthrow thy calumniators

  And deliver thee from their wiles.

  I came to myself and looked round me. Behind the National Monument the sky had turned orange. What would have happened if, near Shehodet Monastery, the goats had never eaten of the fruit of the coffee-shrub? If the imam had never discovered the sleep-dispelling energy of this marvellous plant, had never extracted its divine and demoniacal powers? What if this Prometheus among plants had never become known to man? “There are no plants, there is nothing material,” I murmured. “If there be such things, they are brought into existence by our mythology, the mythology of raw materials.”

  It was time to turn in. But before I did so, I pencilled, to commit myself, the title of the opening chapter of my book:

  “Night in the Land of Yemen.”

  Postscript

  AFTER five years’ study, I bring this saga to a close. Besides the aid of books, I am indebted to the stimulating assistance of friends: first of all to that of Dr. Kurt Schechner of Vienna; next to that of Dr. Eckener, of the Zeppelin aerodrome at Friedrichshafen. These two gentlemen have enabled me to undertake a personal study of coffee culture in South America.

  From the literary point of view, I have suffered the fate common to so many authors. As soon as my book was on the way, I was overwhelmed with letters, data, all kinds of information. New springs were continually welling up.

  No doubt many historical facts must have been overlooked. Much that I had intended to include has slipped through the meshes of my net, because its inclusion would have confused the general impression, and because it was a refractory element. Not every interesting fact can be woven into a comprehensive survey like the present. Here is one example among many. If Francis Bacon, lord chancellor, and pioneer in the field of scientific method, compares the influence of coffee on the brain to the influence of opium, this is not a medical error (had it been such, I should have indicated the fact in the text); but evidence that in 1620 coffee as a beverage was unknown in London, and that one of the leading intelligences in the England of that day knew of it only from hearsay. Here is a historical fact from which inferences can be drawn, but one which has nothing to do with Bacon himself.

  There are other obvious lacunæ. It might have been well to investigate Balzac’s attitude towards coffee, which was sometimes puritanical, sometimes one of intemperate use; or to ask why Fontenelle, in his hundredth year, had come to believe that coffee promotes longevity. A chapter might have been devoted to the great importance assumed by “eleven o’clock coffee” among the huge army of commercial employees in every modern great town. From this might be deduced the need for reducing the import duties on coffee in almost all European States.

  Much, however, has been intentionally omitted. Friends in Warsaw have written to ask whether I am unaware that the proper spelling of Kolshitsky is Kulczycki. I don’t wish to take sides too obviously in so delicate a matter, but it is questionable whether the valiant Kolshitsky was, after all, a Pole! The best and oldest authorities describe him as a Rascian. Rascia is in Serbia, and in Banat Serbs are often called Rascians. If Kolshitsky was a Serb and not a Pole, that explains a good deal. Then, the “Sambor” which is said to have been his birthplace was not the Sambor near Lemberg in Galicia, but “Sombor” in Jugoslavia, a town whose population is today still a mixed one, consisting of Serbs, Hungarians, and Germans. Like all Banat, Sombor was in those days under Turkish rule. This would explain how it was that Kolshitsky could speak Turkish as a second mother-tongue. His servant, Georg Mihailovich, was unquestionably a Serb. Ruthenians contend that Kolshitsky was a Ukrainian, and that his name was really Kolshetshko. The Viennese always spell it Kolschitzky; but Kolshitsky will do for the English-speaking world, the question being one of phonetics rather than of an indeterminable orthography and racial origin.

  The sources of the history of coffee are in a queer condition. Where we should like them to be abundant, they are inclined to dry up. On the other hand, matters of trifling importance are confirmed by a wealth of identical testimony. Hitherto, moreover, there have only been monographs, and works in which coffee is incidentally mentioned; no attempt at an inclusive treatment of the subject. For data concerning the early use of coffee in France, and down to the days of the revolution of 1789, an excellent authority is Alfred Franklin’s Vie privée d’autrefois, in “Arts et métiers des Parisiens du XIIe au XVIIIe siècle” As to the English “coffeo-mania,” consult Westerfrölke’s monograph; as to the Viennese coffee-houses, the Festschrift des Gremiums der Kaffeehausbesitzer in Wien. Uker’s All about Coffee contains trustworthy information upon the history of coffee in America. There are monographs by Dr. Hans Roth, Dr. Hermann Kurth, and Dr. Klara Ratzka-Ernst on the economic history of coffee in Brazil during the nineteenth century, and the latest problems of the coffee industry: over-production and the world market, sequestration, and valorization.

  Bibliography

  BOOK ONE

  ALBANUS, Prosper: De plantis Ægypti liber, Venice, 1592. BOER, de: Geschichte der Philosophie im Islam, 1901. BROCKELMANN: Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur. 1897–1902. BUNGE, Gustav von: Lehrbuch der physiologischen und pathologischen Chemie, Leipzig, 1894. BURCKHARDT, I. L.: Travels in Arabia, London, 1829. DEFLERS, A.: Voyage au Yemen, Paris, 1889. GOLDZIHER, Ignaz: Abhandlungen zur arabischen Philologie, Leyden, 1899. GROHMANN, A.: Süd-Arabien als Wirtschaftsgebiet, Vienna, 1922. HAMMER-PURGSTALL, Joseph Freiherr von: Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches, 1835, and Literaturgeschichte der Araber, Vienna, 1856. HERBERT, Sir Thomas: A Description of the Persian Monarchy, 1634, reissued with additions as Some Yeares Travels into Africa and Asia the Great, 1638. HORMAYR, Joseph: Wien, seine Geschichte und Denkwürdigkeiten, Vienna, 1823–4. KAEMPFER, Engelbrecht: Amoenitatum exoticarum, Lemgo, 1712. KOENIG: Chemie der menschlichen Nahrungs-und Genussmittel, Berlin, 1823. (KOLSHITSKY, F. G.) Warhaffte Erzehlung welcher gestallt in der änstlichen Türkischen Belägerung der kayserl. Haupt-und Residentzstadt Wien in Österreich durch das feindliche Lager gedrungen und die erste Kundschafft zur kayserlichen Haupt-Armee, wie auch von da glücklich wieder zuruck gebracht worden, 1683. KLAGES, Ludwig: Vom kosmogonischen Eros, Munich, 1922. LECLERC: Histoire de la médecine arabe, Paris, 1875–6. LEWIN, Louis: Phantastica, die betäubenden und erregenden Genussmittel, Berlin, 1924. MANZONI, R.: El Yemen, Rome, 1884. MAYER, Hans and Gottlieb: Die experimentelle Pharmakologie als Grundlage der Arzneibehandlung, Berlin, 1930. MOHAMMED, the Prophet: The Koran. MÜLLER, August: Der Islam, 1885–7. MULLER, Edgar: Arabiens Vermächtnis, Hamburg, 1931. NAIRON, Antonius Faustus: De saluberrima potion
e cahue seu cafe nuncupate discursus, Rome, 1671. NIEBUHR, Karsten: Reisebeschreibung von Arabien, Copenhagen, 1774. NIETZSCHE, Friedrich: Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik, 1872. NOORDEN, von, and SALOMON: Handbuch der Ernährungslehre, Berlin, 1920. PAULITSCHKE: Harrar, Leipzig, 1888. POLAK, I. E.: Persien, Leipzig, 1865. PRESCOTT, Samuel C: Report of an Investigation of Coffee, New York, 1927. RAUWOLF, Leonhard: Eigentliche Beschreibung der Raisz so er vor diser Zeit gegen Auffgang in die Morgenländer vollbracht, Laugingen, 1582. RENNER, Victor von: Wien im Jahre 1683, Vienna, 1883. RITTER, Carl: Vergleichende Erdkunde von Arabien, Berlin, 1846. ROHDE, Erwin: Psyche. Seelenkult und Unsterblichskeitsglaube der Griechen, 1890–4. SILVESTRE DE SACY, Antoine: Chrestomathie arabe, Paris, 1826. SNOUCK HURGRONJE, G: Mekkanische Sprichwörter, The Hague, 1886, and Mekka, The Hague, 1888–9. SPENGLER, Oswald: Der Untergang des Abendlandes, Munich, 1922. SPENGER, A.: Das Leben und die Lehre des Mahommed, 1868–9. SCHMIDT, W.: Das südwestliche Arabien, Frankfort-on-Main, 1913. SCHWEINFURTH, Georg: Arabische Pflanzennamen, 1912. TORNAUW, N. von: Das moslemische Recht, St. Petersburg, 1856. TRAPPEN, I. E. van der: Specimen historico-medicum de Coffea, Utrecht, 1843. VAELKEREN: Vienna a Turcis obsessa, Vienna, 1863. VALLE, Pietro della: Viaggi, Brighton, 1843. WELTER: Essai sur l’histoire du café, Paris, 1868.

  BOOK TWO

  ANDERSON, Adam: Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce from Earliest Accounts to the Present Time, 1762. AUDIGER: La maison réglée, Paris, 1692. BRANDES, Georg: Shakespeare, 1898. BRODE, Reinhold: Friedrich der Grosse und der Conflict mit seinem Vater, Leipzig, 1904. Capitular des deutschen Hauses in Venedig, edited by Thomas, Berlin, 1874. BUNTEKUH, Cornelius: Korte verhandeling van ‘t menschenleven, Amsterdam, 1684. CHARLES-ROUX, I.: Aigues-Mortes, Paris, 1910. DAWSON, Warren R.: The Treasures of Lloyds, London, 1930. DROYSEN, J. G.: Der Staat des Grossen Kurfürsten, Leipzig, 1872. DUFOUR, Sylvestre: Traitez nouveaux et curieux du café, du thé et du chocolat, Lyons, 1685. ELLIS, John: An Historical Account of the Coffee, London, 1774. ENNEN: Die Stadt Köln und das Kaufhaus der Deutschen in Venedig. (In the first annual number of the Monatschriften für rheinisch-westphälische Geschichtsforschung und Altertumskunde.) ERD-MANNSDOERFER: De commercio quod inter Venetos et Germaniae civitates aevo medio intercessiti Leipzig, 1858. GALLAND, Antoine: De l’origine et du progrès du café, Caen, 1699. GARNETT, R.: The Age of Dryden, London, 1897. GURLITT, Cornelius: August der Starke, Dresden, 1924. HAENDCKE, Berthold: Deutsche Kultur im Zeitalter des 30-jährigen Krieges, Leipzig, 1906. HAHN, Ludwig: Geschichte des preussischen Vaterlandes, Berlin, 1893. HASCHE: Diplomatische Geschichte Dresdens, von seiner Entdeckung bis auf unsere Tage, Dresden, 1816. HEYD, Wilhelm: Abhandlungen über das Haus der deutschen Kaufleute in Sybels historischer Zeitschrift, 1874, and Geschichte des Levantehandels im Mittelalter, Stuttgart, 1879. HETTNER, Hermann: Literaturgeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts. KIESSELBACH, Arnold: Die wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen der deutschen Hanse und die Handelsstellung Hamburgs, Berlin, 1907. KNACKFUSS, H.: Tizian, Leipzig, 1907. LENTHÉRIC, Charles: Le Rhône, Paris, 1905. MACAULA Y, Thomas Babington: Complete Works, London, 1898. MICHEL, Karl: Beiträge zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Bierbrauerei, Munich, 1906. MONE: Der Süddeutsche Handel mit Venedig (in seiner Zeitschrift). MOSELEY, B.: A Treatise concerning the Properties and Effects of Coffee, London, 1792. OLEARIUS (Oelschläger), Adam: Beschreibung der Newen Orientalischen Reise, Schleswig, 1647. ROBINSON, E. F.: The Early History of Coffee-Houses in England, London, 1893. ROQUE, de la: Voyage de l’Arabie Heureuse, Amsterdam, 1716, and Voyage de Syrie et du Mont Liban, 1723. SCHÄFFLER: König Waldemar und die Hansestädte, Jena, 1879. SCHÜCK: Brandenburg-Preussens Kolonialpolitik. STRIEDER, Jakob: Levantinische Handelsfahrten deutscher Kaufleute des 16. Jahrhunderts, Berlin, 1919. THÉVENOT, Jean de: Relation d’un voyage fait au Levant, Paris, 1665. TISSOT: Von der Gesundheit der Gelehrten, Leipzig, 1769. WARD, Edward: The Humours of a Coffee-House, London, 1709. WESTERFRÖLKE, Hermann: Englische Kaffeehäuser als Sammelpunkte der literarischen Welt im Zeitalter von Dryden und Addison, Jena, 1924. WESTER-MAYER: Jacobus Balde, sein Leben und seine Werke, Munich, 1868. WICQUE-FORT: Relation du voyage d’Adam Olearius en Moscovie, Tartarie et Perse, traduit de l’Allemand, Paris, 1666.