An unexpected delight

Coffeeland is not what I was expecting - a broad history of coffee, its cultivation and its ingestion. It is much more than that. Augustine Sedgewick's coffee narrative ranges far and wide from its starting point in El Salvador, both geographically and topically. Drawing on seemingly disparate threads such as the science of labour, the politics of the United States, advances in weapons technology, and the discoveries of James Joule, and weaving these deftly into a cohesive narrative, Sedgewick brings the listener to a more complete understanding of the interconnectedness of mankind on a global scale. Jason Culp's narration is pleasant and laudably unemotional given the emotive character of many portions of the fraught history of coffee cultivation and El Salvador itself. Best enjoyed with a steaming cup of Java or Mocha in hand.

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Surprisingly fascinating!

Coffeeland A History is way outside what I would usually listen to. When it was recommended to me I wondered how an economic history of coffee in El Salvador and its consumption in the USA could possibly interest me. How wrong I was! This is a fifteen -our totally absorbing and lively history in all its social and economic ramifications. Macro and micro economics made human.
It begins in industrialised Cotonopolis (Manchester) in the late nineteenth century with the astonishingly entrepreneurial young James Hall leaving his teaming native city for Central America. The economic, political and social aspects of the coffee trade he established are developed until the end of Coffeeland over a century later in the time of James Hall’s grandson with El Salvador’s bloody rebellions and its long drawn out civil war in the 1980s.

Having married the daughter of a coffee planter in San Salvador (El Salvador being the country and El Salvador the city), the young immigrant James Hall developed his own plantation on the rich lands of the Santa Ana volcano. Here he applied his prodigious intellect to a catalogue of crucial skills including agricultural inventions, and managerial and marketing strategies. Single-mindedly he took advantage of the natural resources as well as the 1880 coffee blight in Asia , and became a fabulously wealthy oligarch. The gulf between the rich and the poor in El Salvador at this time was the greatest in the world and Hall’s plantation workers were some of the poorest. The hunger of this work force bordered on starvation, whilst the brutal and horrific punishment meted out for offences such as ‘stealing’ a few beans, and the inhumane hours and conditions of labour were barbaric. But to Hall his workers were merely units of labour. Quite simply, extracting maximum labour from minimum outlay made economic sense.

Every aspect of coffee production from seed to drinking cup was ruled according to calculations of economic principles. For example, each coffee sapling had to be planted in a hole. 42,000 holes were required for 42,000 saplings. 800 holes a day would therefore be made on 52 working days. Each man would make a fixed number of holes in a fixed number of hours. The ‘science’ of cost efficient calories then current enabled Hall to calculate exactly how many hours work could be extracted from each man on the least number of calories consumed. This was imposed on a work force almost entirely dependent on the meagre rations it received. Even laughter (which must have been infrequent) was forbidden as it wasted calories. When unrest boiled over into rebellions decades later, it was put down with utmost savagery causing huge loss of life.

Throughout , this vibrant history is packed with far-ranging rand engrossing asides. I was fascinated by them. The best-selling 1860 exposé of the Java coffee fields by the Dutch novelist Matatuli (‘I have suffered ‘in Latin). Coffee drinking competitions (the winner 71 cups in 9 hours in 1926);. The first use of the term Acid Rain (Manchester 1880) and the derivation of the word ‘coffee’. The $20,000,000 donated by the Russian Famine Relief Act under President Hoover in 1921….

Augustine Sedgwick is an American academic and this is American research and writing at its best. He is well served by the excellent narration which skilfully reproduces the diversity of the text.

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