Accounting for taste: British coffee consumption in historical perspective

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 27, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 183-214

  Smith, S D ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF YORK   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 0039348627     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/205154     Document Type: Review

References (103)

1. Joel Mokyr, "Is There Still Life in the Pessimist Case? Consumption During the Industrial Revolution," Journal of Economic History, XLVIII (1988), 74-75, 78-79.
2. Data from Elizabeth B. Schumpeter, English Overseas Trade Statistics, 1697-1808 (Oxford, 1960), 60-62;
3. Robert M. Martin, The Past and Present State of the Tea Trade of England (London, 1832), 21-40;
4. Carole Shammas, The Pre-Industrial Consumer in England and America (Oxford, 1990), 182-183;
5. Edward and Joan Bramah, Coffee Makers: 300 Years of Art and Design (London, 1989), 26-30.
6. By the early 17205, London households seem to have possessed twice as much tea-making as coffee-making equipment (Peter Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London, 1660-1730 [London, 1989], 295, 387).
7. Kirti N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company (Cambridge, 1978), 359-363.
8. The French Compagnie des Indes also began importing mocha after 1710 in competition with Marseilles (T. J. Schaaper, The French Council of Commerce, 1700-1715: A Study of Mercantilism after Colbert [Columbia, 1983], 92).
9. Between 1723 and 1732, Caribbean cultivation was set back by the success of the Compagnie des Indes in gaining a monopoly of the coffee trade and restricting legal supplies to mocha imported into bonded warehouses (Arthur Girault, The Colonial Tariff Policy of France [Oxford, 1916], 23-24).
10. Jürgen Schneider, "The Effects on European Markets of Imports of Overseas Agriculture: The Production, Trade and Consumption of Coffee (15th to late 18th Century)," in José C. Pardo (ed.), Economic Effects of the European Expansion (Stuttgart, 1992), 284-308.
11. The geographical dispersion of the tea plant occurred much later. Tea was not introduced into Java until 1827 or Ceylon before 1877 (Fernand Braudel, Capitalism and Material Life: 1400-1800 [Glasgow, 1973], 181).
12. In 1720, 90% of Dutch imports consisted of mocha, but, by the mid-1720s, Java was meeting most of Holland's needs. Jacob M. Price, "The Map of Commerce, 1683-1721," in John S. Bromley (ed.), The Rise of Great Britain and Russia, 1688-1715/25 (Cambridge, 1970), 859;
13. John E. Wills, "European Consumption and Asian Production in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," in John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds.), Consumption and the World of Goods (New York, 1993), 142-143.
14. J. Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England (London, 1886-1902), VII, 303-371
15. . Michel-Rolph Trouillot, "Motion in the System: Coffee, Colour and Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Saint-Domingue," Review, A Journal of the Fernand Brandet Centre, V (1982), 340-341.
16. French Caribbean coffee began supplanting Arabian coffee in the Turkish market after 1740 (A. C. Wood, A History of the Levant Company [London, 1964], 144, 193).
17. From 1760 to 1762, coffee imports into London averaged 31, 587 cwt. of which 5,523 cwt. was prize coffee (Christopher J. French, "The Trade and Shipping of the Port of London, 1700-1776," unpub. Ph.D. diss. [Univ. of Exeter, 1980], 127-129)
18. . Liverpool responded most energetically to the new trading possibility, importing 26,593 cwt. in 1770 (William Enfield, An Essay Towards the History of Liverpool [Warrington, 1774], 78). Bristol's coffee imports averaged only 1,521 cwt. per annum, 1756-1769, and 1,408 cwt., 1774-1775 (Bristol Society of Merchant Venturers, Wharfage Books; Bristol Public Library, College Green, Presentment Books). Scottish imports between 1770 and 1774 averaged a mere 53 cwt. per annum (Customs 14, Public Record Office). London retained control of the greater portion of the coffee trade, but by 1768-1772, the outports had increased their share of an enlarged trade from virtually nothing to 39% (Customs 3/68-72, Public Record Office).
19. Shammas, Pre-industrial Consumer, 158-169.
20. Jordan Goodman, Tobacco in History: The Cultures of Dependence (London, 1993), 42-55;
21. Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, 1985), 100-108;
22. Massimus Montanari, The Cultures of Food (Oxford, 1994), 125-127.
23. J. C. Drummond, The Englishman's Food: A History of Five Centuries of English Diet (London, 1939), 244;
24. William H. Ukers, All About Tea (New York, 1935), II, 402;
25. Woodruff D. Smith, "Complications of the Commonplace: Tea, Sugar and Imperialism," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXIII (1992), 271-275;
26. Chaudhuri, Trading World of Asia, 379.
27. Beveridge Price History Archive, Box I 27, "Notes on East Indian Extracts by Miss Edmonds," British Library of Political and Economic Science; Chaudhuri, Trading World of Asia, 538.
28. Six isolated tea prices are recorded in surviving London Prices Current: £9 per cwt. and £4 per cwt. for best and ordinary tea, 1679; £11 and £6, 1681; £13 and £6, 1682; £23.25 and £11, 1683; £20 and £5, 1685; £15 and £5, 1702 (Collection of Prices Current, Boxes G35 and G38, Goldsmith Library).
29. Beveridge gives a series of roasted-Turkish coffee purchased by the Lord Steward's department, but there are large runs of missing data and no references to Caribbean coffees; moreover, response of contract prices to market conditions was sluggish. Rogers details a variety of coffees sold in London and provincial towns, but his data frequently fail to specify grades or clarify whether the prices quoted include duty. Average import values of East India coffee are available for 1664-1757; but coverage is limited to mocha, and the data are erratic. Customs ratings applied to East Indian and Levantine import were altered in line with market prices, providing a further source for mocha during the first decade of the eighteenth century (William Beveridge, Prices and Wages in England from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century [London, 1939], I, 420-421;
30. Rogers, Prices, VII, 363-371;
31. Chaudhuri, Trading World of Asia, 521-522; Customs 3/1-15, Public Record Office.)
32. N. W. Posthumus, Inquiry into the History of Prices in Holland (Leiden, 1946), I, 78-80;
33. John Ellis, An Historical Account of Coffee (London, 1774), 74;
34. Humphrey Broadbent, The Domestic Coffee-Man (London, 1722), 11-12;
35. C. H. Denyer, "The Consumption of Tea and Other Staple Drinks," Economic Journal, III (1893), 37;
36. Anne Wilson, Food and Drink in Britain (London, 1973), 408-411, 417;
37. William Alan Cole, "Trends in Eighteenth-Century Smuggling," Economic History Review, X (1958), 403 n.
38. Sources for prices are Kristof Glamman, Dutch-Asiatic Trade, 1620-1740 (Copenhagen, 1958), 285-286;
39. Posthumus, History of Prices, 181-189;
40. Henri Hauser, Recherches et Documents sur l'Histoire des Prix en France de 1500 à 1800 (Paris, 1936), 503-505;
41. Jean Tarrade, Le Commerce Colonial de la France (Paris, 1972), H, 771-772.
42. Pearson's correlation coefficient between Dutch prices and the English customs valuations is r = 0.78 (1700-1715), and between Dutch and French prices, r = 0.85 (1715-1787). In 1761, the average f.o.b. value of coffee exports from Grenada was £2.73; the estimated series gives £2.94. Long gives a range of £3.75 to £4.00 for Jamaican export values in 1772; the series reads £3.51 (MS North Brit. Emp.s.1, £133, Rhodes House Library, Oxford); Edward Long, The History of Jamaica (London, 1774; repr. 1970), I, 529.
43. Phyllis Deane and Cole, British Economic Growth, 1688-1959 (Cambridge, 1967; 2d ed.), 318-319.
44. Coelho suggests that, between 1777 and 1787, the mark up was 25% (Phillip R. Coelho, "The British West Indies: Profit or Loss for Great Britain? A Quantitative Investigation," unpub. Ph.D diss. [Univ. of Washington, 1969], 14-15).
45. According to Ellis, Historical Account, 56, the peacetime freight payable on West India coffee was £9. 4s. per ton in the early 1770s, which is consistent with Long's figure of £9. 8s. per ton from Jamaica in 1774
46. (Long, History of Jamaica, 592). Records of actual commercial transactions, however, suggest that the peacetime freight from Grenada to London was only £4. 10s. per ton, 1773-1774, climbing to £5 per ton in the war year of 1777 (Drury-Lowe MS, DR/E/42, Nottingham University Library).
47. Lowel J. Ragatz, The Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean, 1763-1833 (New York, 1928; repr. 1963), 42, 199.
48. Henry Martin, "An Essay Towards Finding the Ballance of Our Whole Trade" (c. 1720),
49. reprinted in George N. Clark, Guide to English Commercial Statistics, 1696-1782 (London, 1938), 110.
50. Annual series of retained tea and coffee imports are available in Schumpeter, English Overseas Trade Statistics, 60-61.
51. Brian R. Mitchell (ed.), British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), 709-710.
52. Arthur D. Gayer, Walt W. Rostow, and Anna Schwartz, The Growth and Fluctuation of the British Economy, 1790-1850 (Oxford, 1953), microfilm supplement, 777, 838-839.
53. Braudel, Capitalism and Material Life, 180-181;
54. Jonathan I. Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585-1740 (Oxford, 1989), 338;
55. John Crawford, "History of Coffee," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (April, 1852), 56-57;
56. Brian Harrison, Drink and the Victorians (London, 1971), 38-39.
57. Dorothy George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1925; repr. 1965), 296-297;
58. Bryant Lillywhite, London Coffee Houses (London, 1963), 26;
59. Terrence R. Gourvish and Richard G.Wilson, The British Brewing Industry, 1830-1989 (Cambridge, 1994), 3, 19, 600-602;
60. David M. Williams, "Customs Evasion, Colonial Preference and the British Tariff, 1829-42," in Philip L. Cottrell and Derek H. Aldcroft (eds.), Shipping, Trade and Commerce: Essays in Memory of Ralph Davis (Leicester, 1981), 104-110.
61. Cole, "Eighteenth-Century Smuggling," 401-402.
62. Louis Dermigny, La Chine et l'Occident: Le Commerce à Canton au XVIIIe Siecle, 1719-1833 (Paris, 1964), 620, 637-640, 850;
63. Elizabeth E. Hoon, The Organisation of the English Customs System, 1696-1786 (New York, 1938; repr. 1968), 263 n., 277-278, 281.
64. Table I indicates that during the late 1760s and early 1770s, reexports exceeded the volume of coffee imports, reflecting a rise in the incidence of fraud. Seizures of coffee 1769-1773 and 1778-1782 are listed in Reports from Committees of the House of Commons (London, 1803), XI, 229.
65. Ukers, All About Tea, I, 67;
66. Montanari, Cultures of Food, 125;
67. Smith, "Complications of the Commonplace," 268-269.
68. Ellis, Historical Account, 52-53;
69. Benjamin Moseley, A Treatise Concerning the Properties and Effects of Coffee (London, 1792; 5th ed.), xv;
70. Francis Leo Stock (ed.), Proceedings and Debates of British Parliaments Respecting America (Washington, D.C., 1937), IV, 149-152, 166-170.
71. Moseley's pamphlet was reviewed favorably in contemporary journals; see Ragatz, Fall of the Planter Class, 199. For details of further petitions and lobbying activity, see C.O. 137/19, C.O. 138/17, C.O. 71/4, C.O. 137/69, C.O. 101/18, T1/509(434) T1/511(436), T1/523(448), T4/12, Public Record Office.
72. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 109-110;
73. Coelho, "The Profitability of Imperialism: The British Experience in the West Indies, 1768-1772," Explorations in Economic History, X (1972), 260-267.
74. Main Papers, March 24, 1774, "Observations of Lieutenant Governor John Dalling"; "Memorial of the Coffee Planters," House of Lords Record Office.
75. Ralph Davis, The Rise of the Atlantic Economies (London, 1973), 261,
76. does not give his source, but the figures are similar to those reported in Long, History of Jamaica, I, 517.
77. The only ceded colony in the Caribbean not to experience an immediate shift toward sugar was Dominica. Continued uncertainty about the future of an island long subject to Anglo-French rivalry discouraged heavy British investment in sugar planting (Trouillot, "Coffee Planters and Coffee Slaves in the Antilles: The Impact of a Secondary Crop," in Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan [eds.], Cultivation and Culture: Labour and the Shaping of Slave Life in the American [Virginia, 1993], 126-128.) Details of Grenadian coffee planting are given in MS W. Ind.r.4, "An Account of the Islands of Grenada and Tobago," Rhodes House Library, Oxford; MS North, Brit. Emp. S.1, f.133, "Memorandum on the Productivity of Grenada, 1762," Rhodes House Library, Oxford; C.O. 101/18, "State of the Parishes of Grenada," April 1772, Public Record Office.
78. Ragatz, Fall of the Planter Class, 135-136, 199;
79. Braudel, Civilisation and Material Life, 187;
80. Bryan Edwards, An Historical Survey of the French Colony in the Island of St. Domingo (London, 1797), 133-137.
81. Main Papers, March 24, 1774, "Lieutenant Governor Dalling's Observations," House of Lords Record Office.
82. Hoh-cheung Mui and Lorna H. Mui, The Management of Monopoly: A Study of the East India Company's Conduct of Its Tea Trade, 1784-1834 (Columbia, 1984), 91-92, 137-138. For details of the Treasury Orders regulating chicory mixtures, see Parliamentary Papers 1849 (178), L;
83. Arthur Hill Hassall, Food and Its Adulterations (London, 1855), 179-524. For more references to chicory, see also nn. 37-39.
84. Prince's Price Current, No. 1, 253 (1800), lists 7 types of coffee and 23 varieties of tea; No. 1, 709 (1809) lists 14 grades of coffee and 21 kinds of tea; No. 1,918 (1813) lists 15 species of coffee and 21 sorts of tea, Pryme c.730; Hib. 1.785.1., Cambridge University Library.
85. Frederick A. Filby, A History of Food Adulteration and Analysis (London, 1934), 56-57;
86. Denyer, "Consumption of Tea," 35.
87. G. R. Porter, The Progress of the Nation (London, 1836; repr. 1912), 447;
88. Geo.3 c.129 (1803). This act was superseded by 3 Geo. 4 c.53 (1822), which reduced the penalty to £50 and permitted vendors not also selling coffee to stock chicory if they obtained a license. Ukers, All About Coffee (New York, 1922), 170, 728.
89. The timing of the Board's actions reflecting the impending increase in the duty on plantation coffee from 725. 4;d. to 1125. per cwt., in force from June 1819 (Thomas Tooke, A History of Prices and of the State of the Circulation [London, 1838], II, 399).
90. The Times, 29 May 1818
91. . Some of the hearings were reprinted in Frederick Accum, A Treatise on the Adulteration of Food and Culinary Poisons (London, 1820), 241-260.
92. Wilson, Food and Drink, 407, 415-416.
93. Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary, with a Grammar and History, of the English Language (London, 1750) , s.v. Coffee;
94. Ellis, Historical Account, letter of Dr. Fothergill to Ellis, Sept. 1773, 30;
95. Moseley, Treatise, xix-xxi.
96. Christopher P. A. Bennett and Ricardo A. Godoy, "The Quality of Smallholder Coffee in South Sumatra: The Production of Low Quality Coffee as a Response to World Demand," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, XX (1992), 85-100.
97. Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies (Dublin, 1793), 279, 280-282;
98. Ellis, Historical Account, 42. For examples of French planters experimenting with incentive schemes in the late 17805,
99. see P. J. Laborie, The Coffee Planter of Saint Domingo (London, 1797), 150, 151.
100. Edwards, History, 282-284;
101. Laborie, Coffee Planter, 46-47, 49-50, 61.
102. William Young, The West-India Common-Place Book (London, 1807), 70.
103. William Young, The West-India Common-Place Book (1807), Ibid., 73.