The history of the cultivation of coffee by European nations in their colonies is singular. The old Dutch East India Company carried on some traffic with the Arabian ports in the Red Sea; and about the year 1690, the Dutch Governor-General of India, Van Hoorne, caused some ripe coffee-seeds to be brought to Java; they were planted, grew, and produced fruit. He sent a single plant home from. Batavia to Nicholas Witsen, the Governor of the East India Company, which arrived safe, was planted in the Botanic Gardens of Amsterdam, where it prospered, produced fruit, and the fruit young plants. From the Amsterdam garden plants were sent to the Dutch colony of Surinam, and the planters entered on the cultivation of coffee in 1718. The authority for this is the celebrated physician and botanist, Boerhaave, in his Index of the Leyden Garden. In ten years after its cultivation in Surinam it was introduced from that colony by the English into Jamaica. It was sent to Martinique from France in 1720. The first coffee-plant cultivated in Brazil, now the greatest producing country in the world, was reared by a Franciscan monk, of the name of Vellosa, in the garden of the convent of San Antonio, near Rio Janeiro; it throve, and the monk presented its ripe fruit to the viceroy, Lavrado. He judiciously distributed it to the planters, who commenced its cultivation in 1774. From Java the coffee-plant was conveyed to Sumatra, to Célèbes, to the Philippines, and in our own times to Malabar, Mysore, and Ceylon. The few coffee-berries brought from Mocha to Batavia are the parents of the vast quantity now produced, all the coffee now consumed (exceeding 500,000,000 lbs.), save the trifle yielded by Arabia, has the same origin, and the great cultivation and commerce in coffee has all sprung up in less than one hundred and seventy-five years.
SECTION III.
PRODUCTION AND SUPPLY.
The changes in the sources of supply of coffee within the last quarter of a century are very remarkable. The British possessions in the East, where land and labour is cheap, have taken the place which our Western possessions formerly occupied.
The British West India Islands and Demerara have fallen off in their production of coffee from 30,000,000 lbs. to 4,000,000 lbs. San Domingo, Cuba, and the French West India colonies are also gradually giving up coffee culture in favour of other staples. It is chiefly Brazil, some of the Central American republics, Java, Ceylon, and British India, that are able to render coffee a profitable crop.
At the close of the last century the consumption of coffee was under one million pounds; the only descriptions then known in the London market were Grenada, Jamaica, and Mocha—the two former averaging about 5l. per cwt., and the latter 20l. per cwt. Grenada coffee is now unknown, and Ceylon, Java, and Brazil are the largest producers.
In 1760 the total quantity of coffee consumed in the United Kingdom was 262,000 lbs., or three-quarters of an ounce to each person in the population.
From 1801 to 1804 the average quantity of coffee consumed by each individual of the population was only about 1 oz., whilst 1½ lbs. of tea per head was used. From 1805 to 1809 the consumption of coffee was 3 oz. per head. From 1810 to 1824, when the duty was reduced by about one-third, the consumption was 8 oz. After this, when the duty on British-grown coffee was further reduced to 9d. and 6d. the pound, the consumption rose to 1 lb., and by 1850 to 1½ lbs. But this consumption was not uniform for the United Kingdom, for while in England 1 lb. 12 oz. was used, in Scotland only 6 oz. were consumed, and in Ireland but 2 oz.
The quantities of coffee consumed in Great Britain in each decennial period, comparing the consumption with the growth of the population, and exhibiting the influence of high and low duties, are shown by the following statement. The figures up to 1841 are from Porter’s “Progress of the Nation.” Those since are computed from official documents:
| No. of lbs. consumed. | Duty on B. P. coffee. | Population of Great Britain. | Average consumption. | |
| s. d. | lbs. oz. | |||
| 1801 | 750,000 | 1 6 | 10,942,646 | 0 1·09 |
| 1811 | 6,390,122 | 0 7 | 12,596,803 | 0 8·12 |
| 1821 | 7,327,283 | 1 0 | 14,391,631 | 0 8·01 |
| 1831 | 21,862,264 | 0 6 | 16,262,301 | 1 5·49 |
| 1841 | 27,298,322 | 0 6 | 18,532,335 | 1 7·55 |
| 1851 | 32,504,545 | 0 3 | 21,000,000 | 1 4·98 |
| 1861 | 35,204,040 | 0 3 | 23,266,755 | 1 1·33 |
It appears from the foregoing figures, that, when the duty amounted to 1s. 6d. per lb., the use of coffee was confined altogether to the rich. The quantity then used throughout the kingdom scarcely exceeded on the average one ounce for each inhabitant in the year.