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

73 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH
massive quantities of coffee to the ports economically feasible. Beginning in the middle of the
19 th century, the steamship revolution also made transportation from Brazilian ports to Europe
and the U.S. somewhat cheaper, much quicker, and more reliable (Topik 2003: 31-6; 1987: 59-
63).
The coffee commodity chain shifted geographically in this cycle. The archetypal coffee
trade route during the Dutch cycle had been Java to Amsterdam; under the British cycle it was
Brazil to New York. The form of transactions also shifted. Mercantilist transactions that operated
within imperial spheres gave way to market transactions between U.S. and European trading
firms and Latin American exporters. 12
The British cycle represents a major change from the Dutch in the relative importance of
material life, the market, and capitalism. Capitalism moves into new home grounds, the layer of
the market greatly expands, and consequently, the layer of material life recedes. With the coming
of the Industrial Revolution, capitalism began to radically restructure the material lives of the vast
majority of the population that had been confined to that “layer of stagnant history” (Braudel
1981:28). As peasants were drawn or driven off the land and into the factories to become the new
working class, they needed a stimulant to get them up in the morning and keep them awake
through a long working day. While tea provided that stimulation in Britain, coffee provided it in
Continental Europe and the U.S.. Consequently, there are important differences between the ways
that coffee was used by the upper classes in the coffeehouses of the Dutch cycle and by the
working classes of the British cycle. Coffee began to move out of the coffeehouse and into the
home (Jimenez 1995: 39-41). As a result, the focus of coffee consumption moved from the social
rituals surrounding it to the physical effects of the beverage. This changed the way people thought
about coffee, from a beverage that promoted alertness and mental agility for conversation and
debate, to a much more instrumental orientation: coffee was an aid that helped them to earn a
wage. In other words, coffee drinking began to move out of the realm of material life and into the
realm of the market economy.
It seems that rising hegemons are already testing and
perfecting their organizational innovations well before they attain hegemonic status. The British
(and French) were already internalizing production costs through colonial coffee production
during the Dutch cycle, and during the British cycle, the U.S. was perfecting a new form of
neocolonial domination of nominally independent nations. Already, there was heavy U.S. and
European participation in the Latin American export firms (Topik 1998: 58-60). This allowed the
traders to drive down export prices and maximize the price spreads between export and import
markets, thus earning large profits. Finally, the volume of coffee flowing through the chain also
expanded dramatically as coffee went from a luxury item to a mass consumption good.
Capitalism had already relinquished the long distance trade in coffee by the financial
expansion of the Dutch cycle, as the trade became more regular and competitive. During the
British cycle, a few capitalists who managed to gain market power in both exporting and
importing markets were able to manipulate the markets to earn large profits, but trade was no
longer the main locus of capitalism. It had been involved in the spread of colonial production
during the Dutch cycle, but this option also began to decline during the British cycle. Capitalism
now moved directly into production, in Brazil. The increasing demand for coffee by the growing
U.S. working class was expressed at the level of the market economy. Brazilian planters read
12
Some mercantilist transactions between European colonial powers and their colonies continued, but they
were no longer the most important ones.