Submitted by: Errol Grange
Our demand for coffee has become so powerful we have leveraged technology to create such machines as a single serve coffee maker to meet it. The demand for coffee remained just that for hundreds of years: a demand. The sheikdoms of Arabia had monopolized the bean by only selling the denatured bean, that is, they made it a policy to never sell the live bean or plant. This secured their coffee monopoly for almost 300 years. But, as is the case with all great secrets, sooner or later, they are discovered, either by stealth or force.
In the case of breaking the Arabian monopoly, it was a matter of stealth. Although the person or persons credited with actually smuggling the live coffee beans out of Arabia has become a matter of myth, what remains irrefutable is where they ended up. They ended up in the hands of Dutch merchants. By the end of the 17th Century, the Dutch had experimented with coffee plantations in India, where they failed miserably.
Desperate, the Dutch planted the last of the live seeds across plantations in colonial Indonesia. Specifically, they were planted on the island of Java. As you might expect, the experiment was such a success we take the term java as a colloquialism for coffee. The Dutch coffee cultivation soon spread from Java to Sumatra and Celebes. Like the sheikdoms they had pilfered, the Dutch struggled to maintain a monopoly on the trade in Europe.
Then, something very strange happened. In spite of the best efforts of the Dutch East India Company, the Mayor of Amsterdam presented a young coffee tree to King Louis XIV of France in 1714. In a single goodwill gesture the Dutch had given away their monopoly to the French. Louis had the tree planted in the Royal Botanical Garden and enjoyed the fruits of his labor in royal seclusion. When asked by a young naval officer, Gabriel de Clieu, nearly a decade later, if he could take a snippet from the tree for cultivation on the colony of Martinique, Louis inexplicable and emphatically said no.
Clieu, ever the daredevil, defied his king and sneaked into the Botanical Garden under the cover of night. There he took a snippet of the coffee tree and made a dash for his waiting ship. But, all was not well. This was just the beginning of his trials. He would have to endure horrendous weather, dehydration, a saboteur, and pirate attacks to reach Martinique. Needless to say, he survived, as did the coffee snippet.
Within 50 years, that lone snippet was used to birth more than 20 million subsequent coffee trees. These trees transformed the Caribbean and Central and South America into coffee producing hubs. Officer Clieu s acts of daring set free the bean from monopolists, sheikdoms, and corporations. Many would claim our popular consumption of coffee has everything to do with Clieu s refusal to take no for an answer.
But, Clieu is just part of the equation. Coffee was transformed into a populist beverage because of another ambitious, daring hero. In this case our protagonist is not French, but Portuguese. Commissioned by the Portuguese crown to solicit a live seedling from the French governor in Martinique, Francisco de Mello Palheta tried his best to obtain it lawfully. Alas, the French governor refused. However, Palheta was allegedly so charismatic the governor s wife smuggled live seeds in a bouquet of flowers and presented them to Palheta as a gift. When the seeds reached Brazilian fields, the rest, as they say, was history.
About the Author: Errol Grange loves coffee and sailing. If you would like to learn more about how a single serve coffee maker can make your life easier, visit
cbtl.com/default.aspx
or more specifically
cbtl.com/Systems.aspx
.
Source:
isnare.com
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