The Essence of Commodification: Caffeine dependencies in the early modern world

Journal of Social History, Winter, 2001 by Ross W. Jamieson

Coffeehouses opened all over Europe in the 1640 to 1660 period, but in the latter part of the seventeenth century their character began to change. In Paris Francesco Procopio Coltelli opened the Cafe Procope in 1686. When the French Comedy opened across the street, the Procope gained a reputation as the gathering-place for authors, playwrights and actors. No longer a small, smoky, "Armenian" coffeehouse, the Procope maintained an air of the exotic in its "Arab" decor and waiters in "Eastern garb", who served coffee in porcelain cups. (39)

In England the number of coffeehouses grew into the thousands by the late seventeenth century. It became an institution that replaced the alehouse as a place for men to meet to discuss business and politics. Coffeehouses became a focus of an emerging bourgeois class of urban professionals, and the caffeine beverages served were associated with sobriety and virtue. Men of all social classes were welcome in the coffeehouses, although women were not. Rules were often posted against swearing, gambling, and toasting one's health, thus further distinguishing coffeehouses from taverns. The coffeehouse became the place to gather news of use to merchants and other professionals, and particular coffeehouses became synonymous with certain professions. London coffeehouses were the birthplaces of such institutions as Lloyd's Insurance and the London Stock Exchange. (40)

From its European introduction in the 1640s up until the first decade of the eighteenth century all coffee production remained in the hands of Arab growers in Yemen and Eritrea. The English and Dutch mercantile companies controlled the purchasing of the product and its importation into Europe, shifting the initial Arab-controlled Mediterranean trade to a seaborne European-controlled trade around the Cape of Good Hope. The VOC brought their first major coffee shipment into Amsterdam in 1661. The Levant Company controlled coffee imports into England in the seventeenth century, bringing loads via the Red Sea from Yemen, and then overland to Mediterranean ports. The EIC, in contrast, began to purchase coffee in 1669 at the port of Surat in India, shipped there from Mokha by Arab traders. By the year 1700 both the VOC and the EIC had established direct trade for coffee at the port of Mokha. The EIC decided that Egyptian instability threatened the Mediterranean route to Europe, and by 1710 they were shipping coffee from Mokha around the Cape of Good Hope to European ports, entirely avoiding the Near Eastern trade. (41)

With increasing European consumption came a strong desire on the part of mercantile companies to control the coffee production as well as its trade. Wild fluctuation in coffee prices at Mokha further encouraged this desire. Coffee plants proved relatively easy to transplant, and the Dutch, French and English all began plantations in the early eighteenth century. The VOC planted on Java in 1707 and by 1712 the first Java crop reached Amsterdam. At the same time the Dutch planted in Surinam, introducing coffee to the Caribbean region.42