Entire Volume 17 issue 1 - Journal of World-Systems Research ...

THE COFFEE COMMODITY CHAIN 68
by French planters using slave labor (Campbell 2003: 68-9). This exemplified the French and
British mercantilist strategy, which was soon to overtake the Dutch, of exerting direct control
over production (Arrighi 1994: 176-7). The labor necessary to pursue this strategy was supplied
by slavery.
From these beginnings in Java and Bourbon 6 , coffee quickly spread to the New World,
but via Europe. Coffee was raised in the Amsterdam and Paris botanical gardens, and seedlings
from these plants were carried to Surinam by the Dutch in the early 1700s, and to Martinique by
the French in the 1720s. Surinam and Martinique would be the source for most, if not all, the
coffee trees that diffused throughout the Americas in subsequent centuries (Wrigley 1988: 40-7;
Ukers 1935:2-5). From Martinique, coffee was introduced into Saint-Domingue (Haiti), which
became a major producer in the second half of the century, until the 1791 revolution (Trouillot
1982: 337-8). The British also introduced it into Jamaica in about 1730 (Ukers 1935: 70), but
Jamaica only became a major producer, briefly, after a slump in world sugar prices and the arrival
of Saint-Domingue planters driven out by the revolution, in the early 19 th century (Delle 1998:
50-2). Coffee from Surinam or French Guiana was introduced into Brazil in the 1720s, and coffee
from these and other sources spread through other Caribbean, Central and South American
colonies in the latter half of the 18 th century (Wrigley 1988: 46-50; Ukers 1935: 5). Latin
Americans would become the world’s major producers only after their countries achieved
independence in the 1820s. All of these developments during the Dutch cycle brought the coffee
commodity chain more firmly under European control. Consumption spread through Europe, and
most production was now within the boundaries of the expanding European world-economy
(Trouillot 1982: 339-40). But the spread of production itself was also a part of the outward
expansion of the boundaries of the system, as new areas of the world outside of Europe were
linked to the core of the system, as suppliers of coffee. 7
As was the case for the Islamic-controlled commodity chain during the Genoese cycle,
the main driving force behind the development of this new, European-controlled coffee
commodity chain was at the level of material life. Just as the coffeehouse filled a social need in
Islamic societies, so it did in European cities. As coffeehouses spread through Europe in the
second half of the 17 th century, demand increased, but Mocha was still the only source of coffee.
The long-distance traders were the key connections between these export and import markets.
European coffeehouse owners had no direct knowledge of coffee production or of the supply
available in Mocha; and the Arab merchants in Mocha who sold it could only infer information
about final demand for coffee in Europe from the amounts purchased by the traders. Further,
there were no regular markets for coffee in the early days of this trade. The arrival in Mocha of a
European trader wanting to buy coffee raised local prices (Wrigley 1988: 16). Conversely, the
arrival of a new load of coffee in Amsterdam probably depressed local prices (Topik 2003: 29).
6 The names of these earliest coffee production sites were used to denote types of coffee in the early trade,
and they have become a part of contemporary coffee lingo. Mocha is still used to denote the type of coffee
grown in Yemen, and is often applied to coffees with similar taste characteristics. Java became an
American slang word meaning coffee in general, as well as denoting coffee produced on the island of Java,
which is a constituent of the oldest and best known coffee blend, Mocha Java. Bourbon today is used to
denote a specific variety of Arabica coffee tree, supposedly a direct descendant of the trees that were
brought from Bourbon to Martinique by way of Paris.
7 This process involved other commodities besides coffee; foremost among them sugar, which was the
main plantation crop of both Saint-Domingue and Jamaica.