STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 45 Perspective By Adam Monaghan T Untangling Coffee's Colonial Roots he historical narrative of the global coffee trade — the behemoth supply chain that keeps the world caffeinated — can be especially confronting if we let our guard down and open our minds to perspectives we otherwise prefer to avoid. Within the specialty coffee industry, a tension often exists between harshly judging the past through a modern moral lens and ignoring uncomfortable truths altogether. However, if we truly want to understand where our coffee comes from and work to- ward a more balanced and equitable system, we must grapple with the colonial power structures that continue to shape the trade today. The Colonial Roots of Extraction Coffee originates from the same East African cradle that also gave rise to humankind. The wild plant existed for hundreds of thousands of years in the cloud forest ecosys- tem of modern-day Ethiopia and South Sudan before the nomadic Oromo people first recognized the stimulating power of its naturally occurring caffeine. Yet it wasn't until the 15th century that the crop was cultivated for trade by Arab merchants in Yemen. From there, and through the 16th century, its use spread from Sufi monasteries to public coffeehouses in what is now modern-day Egypt, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. The Arabs in Yemen had confined the coffee trade to the Middle East until the mid-17th century, when their monopoly was broken and coffeehouses sprang up in cities across Europe. Between 1660 and 1730, Dutch, French, and British merchants smuggled coffee seeds and trees from Yemen into European botanical gardens and out to their plantations in Asia and the Caribbean, establishing the first genuinely global coffee supply chain. How and Why Did They Do It? The convergence of scientific discovery, European imperialism, and capitalism un- derpinned this venture. While Arabs and Persians laid the foundation for scientific discovery during the Golden Age of Islam, Europeans applied systems, tools, and knowledge to acquire power in the name of progress. This idea is captured elegantly by author Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, who explains, Despite the evolution of coffee's global economic systems, power remains concentrated in the hands of a comparatively small number of wealthy individuals whose lineage dates back to the era of European conquest. Considered the birthplace of coffee, Ethiopia's ancient nomadic people, the Oromo, were the first to appreciate its stimulating effects. Photo credit: Caner Conkisi "Whoever believes in progress believes that geographical discoveries, technologi- cal inventions and organizational devel- opments can increase the sum total of human production, trade and wealth." Imbued with this idea of progress, wealthy European aristocrats invested in the first limited liability joint stock companies established by enterprising merchants and bankers in Amsterdam, Paris, and London. These companies built fleets to sail across oceans, explored "new" lands and people, returned with goods to trade for profit, repaid the in- vestors, and reinforced the colonial-cap- italist cycle. Soon, these unrestrained private companies raised mercenary armies to se- cure land, resources, and trade routes by force. They established the transatlantic slave trade, compelled indigenous popu- lations into labor, and used their power and influence to create laws, institutions, and systems to protect their wealth. From the European perspective, this was considered progress. The emergent capitalist model provided steady profits to the merchants buying cheap coffee from the colonies while simultaneously driving demand in the consuming na- tions. Profit-making relied on two brutal

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