Coffee: The Epic of a Commodity (38 page)

Very remarkable has been the history of coffee on the African continent. Africa was the original home of the coffee-plant. Two different kinds of coffee are indigenous to Africa. The transplanted Ethiopian coffee-bush was the source of Arabian coffee. On the west coast of Africa grew the Liberian coffee-tree, differing considerably from Ethiopian coffee. This West African tree sometimes grows to twice the height of the Arabian coffee-bush. Its leaves and its berries are more resistant, more robust, less susceptible to disease than those of the Arabian coffee-plant. When, during the nineteenth century, in many parts of the world the success of coffee-plantations was endangered by parasitic diseases, the Arabian bushes were replaced by Liberian, or by a hybrid of the two, the vigorous “robusta-bush.” Sometimes these experiments were successful, but at other times the quality of the coffee fell off. No more than every kind of vine can be successfully grown in every vineyard, can every kind of coffee be successfully grown in every coffee-plantation. During recent decades, coffee has become less tasty, less aromatic, has, as connoisseurs say, become “smokier.” This is because the planters have overlooked the importance of a sound relationship between soil and seed. Climatic or atmospheric conditions doubtless play a part as well as soil. To quote a saw from the brewing trade: “You cannot brew Milwaukee beer outside of Milwaukee.”

Many investigators regard Africa as the coffee-country of the future. The French have greatly increased production in Madagascar, Guinea, and Somaliland. Good crops are being raised in the sometime German colonies. New coffee-countries are Kenya and Uganda. The Portuguese have had very remarkable success in Angola. Nevertheless, the African figures of coffee-production seen almost microscopic when compared with those of Brazil. In the year 1930, the whole African continent supplied only five hundred and forty thousand sacks, as against Brazil’s twenty-nine million.

The rise and fall of coffee-countries, often going up like a rocket and coming down like the stick, was but a reflection of the “colonial nervousness” characteristic of the nineteenth century. “Put money in thy purse,” was the motto; exploit the possibilities of newly acquired territories without thought of the future. Envy of neighbours has, in most cases, been the chief spur to colonial activity.

Each of the newly settled regions has its peculiar history, but none a history more peculiar than that of the coffee epic in Ceylon.

How did coffee-planting begin in Ceylon?

Like the rest of the Indies, in old colonial days Ceylon was discovered by the Portuguese. Then the Dutch dispossessed them.

When Napoleon’s brother Louis became king of Holland, so that dynastic interests connected Holland with France, the time was ripe for Ceylon to fall a prey to Britain. In the Peace of Amiens (1803), Holland was forced to renounce Ceylon. England annexed the wealthy island.

The first British governor was struck by the fact that in certain districts the inhabitants did not drink tea, but coffee. This was strange, since the Cingalese were not Mohammedans but Buddhists, and Buddhists in general are tea-drinkers, not coffee-drinkers. Inquiry showed that the Dutch had brought coffee from Java fifty years before, and had inaugurated plantations. These had not been extensive, however, probably because the Hollanders did not wish Ceylon to become a formidable competitor to Java.

The British, the new owners of the island, had little interest in coffee-growing. Their only interest in coffee was as traders and as the bankers of the world. Still, political considerations compelled them to occupy themselves with coffee-growing in Ceylon. This came about because, in the course of the Napoleonic wars, the British had occupied Java, which they held from September 1811 to August 1814. Temporarily, therefore, they were masters of what was then the most important coffee-growing region in the world.

Though their tenure of power there was brief—for when the Napoleonic mess was cleared up, Java was restored to the Dutch—the English had, during these three years, become initiated into the mysteries of coffee-growing. They were quick to realize how similar were the climatic and agrarian conditions of Java and Ceylon. This made them wish to become coffee-planters in the latter island. Partly determinative was the fact that in the peninsula of Hindustan the consumption of coffee was increasing, at any rate among the Mohammedans. When in the year 1806 the British frigate
Panther
anchored in the port of Mocha, the officers noted that wearers of turbans abounded there. No less than two hundred and fifty merchants had come from Hindustan for cargoes of coffee to be shipped to their own country.

But if India now drank so much coffee, it would be better to grow the supply in a British colony. It would be better for political as well as for commercial reasons, inasmuch as the ties between the Indian Mohammedans and the Turkish caliphate were a source of anxiety to the British, and trading voyages from Hindustan to Arabia would tend to strengthen these ties. It would be much better if the Indian Mohammedans could get their coffee from Ceylon.

The soil of the island was extremely suitable, and the climate more stable than that of the adjoining mainland. The southwest monsoon ensured a regular rainfall; and even May, the hottest month, had its fires tempered by the insular position of Ceylon. The climate was mild as compared with that of the river-mouths and arid jungles of Hindustan proper.

For thousands of years the moist fertility of Ceylon had been known, not only to the natives but to the western world. The Hellenes wrote of Taprobane as a “garden-island.” Five hundred years before Christ, the Hindu emperor Pandukabaya had begun terraced cultivation. During the subsequent two thousand five hundred years, despite continued tillings, the upper strata of the soil had not been exhausted. Gneiss, lava, and coral rag contributed to its richness.

In the year 1812, the export of coffee from Ceylon amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand kilograms. In 1837, it had risen to ten times as much. In 1845, it had reached fifteen million kilograms; in 1859, double that quantity; and in 1869, over fifty million kilograms. This was a success all the more remarkable since the cultivable area was not extremely large, being smaller than that of Java, to say nothing of Brazil.

The yield of coffee from Ceylon might have been yet further increased had not the Cingalese shown a growing disinclination for labour. Their own wants were few, for they could live upon rice and fruit; and, being pious Buddhists, they had religious objections to labour on the coffee-plantations. These scruples led, in 1848, to a rebellion against the strict regime of Governor Torrington.

Harsh measures were unavailing. From year to year, the natives showed themselves more and more disinclined for coffee-growing. Since they were paid for coffee by weight in Colombo, the capital, they had a way of boiling the berries beforehand to make them heavier and larger. Nevertheless, despite such pranks coffee-growing continued to thrive in Ceylon until in 1857 something ominous occurred.

That was the year of the Sepoy Rebellion, when Britain was hard put to it to maintain her grip on Hindustan. There were massacres of the whites in Cawnpore, Delhi, and elsewhere. During this period, strange birds visited Ceylon and feasted on the ripening berries. Similar invasions of crows had been recorded during the days of Dutch rule. While the English remained unperturbed, or dispersed the birds now and again by a sprinkling of grape-shot, the Cingalese looked anxiously in one another’s brown faces. No doubt the birds would fly away again, but were they really birds? Were they not discontented spirits, whose crooked claws were a token of death and of a curse that had been decreed against the wealth of the English plantations?

The common folk of Ceylon who made a modest living in other ways than by coffee-planting—cotton-weavers and rice-growers, fishermen and sailors, makers of palm-oil and distillers of arrack, brick-makers and potters—praised the gods that they had nothing to do with coffee, which was doomed to destruction. But the English paid no heed. Wearing white topis and red tunics—red as if stained with blood—they returned from crushing the Indian mutiny. The excrement of the strange birds, the dung with which the plantations were freely besprinkled, did not differ from any other manure. The blue-eyed men, who cared nothing for omens, continued to hold sway over the island.

But ten years later, in 1867, the Cingalese began to whisper that a disease had attacked the coffee-shrubs. They showed one another leaves spotted with a red vesicular eruption, tiny vesicles at first, and only on the underside of the leaves. Hands and clothing, to which the spores clung, spread the disease everywhere. Three years later this rust had affected two-thirds of the plantations in the island. It attacked only the coffee-shrubs. Rice-fields and coco-nut-palms were unaffected. By the decree of destiny, the deadly organism was deadly only to the coffee-plant.

From the spores that settled on the leaves, a mycelium grew into the substance of the cells. A reddish-brown eruption covered the leaf and choked it. By 1870, this blight,
Hemileia vastatrix
, had stripped most of the shrubs.

Too late did the governmental authorities of Ceylon recognize the danger. At first they had regarded the blight as a local phenomenon. But when it spread all over the island they cabled to London for help. Botanical institutes throughout the world conducted experiments. But by the time a remedy was suggested, the malady was too widespread, destruction was too far advanced.

Experts from England fought the plague with sulphur and lime, with sulphate of iron and sulphate of copper, with tobacco sprays. Here and there they were successful. But since millions of coffee-trees had been infected, they could not cope with the evil. By the middle of the eighteen-eighties,
Hemileia vastatrix
had conquered. In the devastated coffee-plantations a new crop was grown—tea. India’s sun and Buddha’s heaven watched over the tea-plant. Its leaves were healthy. Patience and strength dwelt in their tissues. The tea-plant was a challenge to men to be as vigorous and simple as it itself was.

The last coffee-crop harvested in Ceylon was in the year 1900, and amounted to no more than seven thousand sacks. For years the island had been one of Brazil’s rivals, but now was out of the running.

It had once more become a tea-growing country. In 1926, Ceylon led the world as a tea-producing land, exporting this product to the value of 213,000,000 rupees.

W
HILE
on the island of Ceylon a biochemical destroyer was calling a halt to the growth of coffee, the coffee-plantations continued to expand luxuriantly in Brazil. There no cry of alarm hindered advance. Year after year, in one province after another, the coffee-berries ripened. No matter that the harvest could not be reaped. The trees went on reproducing themselves. Perpetually they scattered new seed upon the land.

Besides, the planters were compelled to garner their crops, for they had workmen to pay and to keep busy. So, anxious at heart, the plantation-owners gave orders that the ripe berries should be picked, though they knew that they were being ruined thereby. What else could they do?

Six varieties were mainly planted, varieties as different as apples or roses that bear different names. Experts could recognize them from a distance by the position and aspect of the twigs. The favourite shrub was the “creolo,” the “national coffee of Brazil.” Next came the “bourbon,” more valuable but more delicate, more sensitive to frost and wind; it was less long-lived than the “creolo,” but bore more fruit. The “botucatu,” or the “yellow,” was the richest in caffeine. Its berries remained yellow until they ripened.

Java coffee, our old acquaintance of the Dutch Indies, was early transplanted to Brazil. The yield was good, but the taste was coarse. Then there was the largest of the Brazilian coffee-trees, the “maragogipe,” which was grown in the Bahia district. It had abundant berries, and produced coffee of a good flavour.

The story of the harvesting was the same year after year. The blossoms were small, odorous, white. The calyx had five sepals; the corolla, five petals; the androecium, five stamens. After pollination, the fruit grew in the ovary. At first it was green, then yellow, then cherry-red. When signs of drying appeared in the berries, pickers came with their ladders. Cloths were spread round each tree. The harvest did not ripen everywhere at the same moment. That depended mainly upon altitude, being later in the mountains than in the valleys. At the drying-stations, the berries had to be sorted into “secco,” “maduro,” and “verde.”

When the harvest had been garnered, the “preparation” followed, in accordance with either of two well-tried methods.

The first method was simple and inexpensive. After the berries had been dried for a while in the sun, they were pounded in wooden mortars to break the husks, from which the beans were then separated by sifting. The “wet process” was more thorough, but costlier, since it needed machinery. Through a pipe, the berries were poured into a pulping-machine, which detached the outer envelope of the fruit from the bean. The sugar-containing, sticky pulp having been detached, the beans were washed, and stored for a while in fermenting-tanks. Then, for three or four weeks, they were exposed to the sun on the great drying-terraces. Every evening they were raked together into a mound, and covered with coco-nut matting, palm leaves, or thin tin-plate, to keep off the dew. Early next morning, they were spread out once more in the sunshine. If rain threatened, the coffee was quickly shovelled into ventilated store-houses, where the drying process could continue.

When, after four weeks, the beans had acquired a “dureza vitrea,” a glassy hardness, the experts knew that the process was finished, provided that the outer shell could no longer be scratched by the fingernail, and that when the bean was struck by a hammer, it was not flattened, but remained resilient. The coffee was now ready for shipment. No, not quite. It still contained useless elements which added to its weight, and therefore to the cost of freightage. These were horny substances which had to be detached from the bean in another machine. With them was also removed the “silver-skin” that had continued to cling to the bean. Now at length the coffee was a finished commodity, ready for the market and for the world.