04/01/2020
Combining biography with a socioeconomic study, Sedgewick (history, City Univ. of New York) examines the consumption and growing of coffee. The biographical portion focuses on British ex-patriot James Hill, a prominent planter in El Salvador from the end of the 19th century through his death in 1951. Sedgewick recounts how coffee became a beverage of choice in the United States, and how it transformed formerly diverse El Salvadoran agriculture into a monoculture. He details the difficulties Hill and other planters had to overcome with growing conditions, labor, and global price fluctuations. Also discussed are scientific and marketing breakthroughs and the more sensitive subject of how Hill and other planters used food and hunger to coerce labor from workers. Sedgewick also covers the interplay of coffee with world wars and the Great Depression, along with revolution and poverty. He concludes that coffee is the commodity that best explains how the global economy functions between producers and consumers and what that relationship says about fairness and justice. VERDICT Sedgewick's wide-ranging work is most appropriate for readers with a serious interest in food economics.—Lawrence Maxted, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA
2020-01-13
A broad-ranging, often surprising study of the economics and political ecology of coffee.
Drawing alongside such studies as Stanley Mintz's Sweetness and Power and Tom Standage's A History of the World in Six Glasses, Sedgewick, a professor of history and American studies, debuts with an examination of the intersection of people from different parts of the world in forging an extractive colonial economy. One was a Brazilian immigrant to El Salvador who arrived in the mid-1800s and set to work nudging the agricultural economy away from indigo and toward coffee. That deal was sealed with the arrival, decades later, of another immigrant, this one from England. James Hill, writes the author, oversaw the conversion of that agricultural economy to the monocultural production of coffee, with coffee plantations that eventually took up a huge percentage of the country's arable land. All of this was done in concert with American markets, with the timing just right for the arrival of immigrants to the U.S. who came from coffee-drinking Mediterranean societies. It also appealed to a change of tastes that, in its day, had children both drinking and growing the stuff, with Danish immigrant Jacob Riis observing in New York "men and boys of all ages crowded around one-cent coffee stalls on the street." Sedgewick casts a wide net in his capably written book, observing, for instance, that liberals in newly independent El Salvador had once made advances to the U.S. to be incorporated as a state. Moreover, he links the rise of the coffee monoculture to the development of an enriched ruling class in that country but also an immiseration of the peasantry: "The transformation of the volcanic highlands into a coffee monoculture transformed the diet of El Salvador's working people into a flat, featureless landscape of tortillas and beans." Meanwhile, workers in the U.S. became so dependent on coffee, and so powerful in times of labor shortage, that the coffee break was enshrined in the nation's culture and remains so today.
An intriguing account that darkens the depths of that daily cup of joe.
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
“[A] beautifully written, engaging and sprawling portrait of how coffee made modern El Salvador, while it also helped to remake consumer habits worldwide.” —Lizabeth Cohen, New York Times Book Review
"Throughly engrossing . . . [Sedgewick's] literary gifts and prodigious research make for a deeply satisfying reading experience studded with narrative surprise." —Michael Pollan, The Atlantic
“Extremely wide-ranging and well researched, Sedgewick’s story reaches out into American political history, not to mention the history of American breakfast, but it is mostly set in El Salvador, where a large-scale monoculture of coffee began, at the turn of the twentieth century, under the fiendishly brilliant direction of a British expat named James Hill [ . . . .] The originality and ambition of Sedgewick’s work is that he insistently sees the dynamic between producer and consumer—Central American peasant and North American proletarian—not merely as one of exploited and exploiter but as a manufactured co-dependence between two groups both exploited by capitalism.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
"Sedgewick's gripping book exposes the dark heart of what goes into making a ubiquitous commodity, cherished every morning, enshrined in the workplace and appreciated after a meal. It provides a devastating answer to the question: ‘What does it mean to be connected to faraway people and places through everyday things?'" —Colin Greenwood, The Spectator (UK)
“Wonderful, energizing . . . Coffeeland is a data-rich piece of original research that shows in compelling detail how coffee capitalism has delivered both profit and pain, comfort and terror to different people at different times over the past 200 years . . . Sedgwick's great achievement is to clothe macroeconomics in warm, breathing flesh.” –Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian
"Meticulously researched, vivid in its scene-setting, fine-toothed in its sociopolitical analysis . . . Coffeeland lays bare the history and reality behind that cup of joe you’re drinking." —Boston Globe
“Epic, illuminating.” –Daily Telegraph (UK)
"Impressive . . . A powerful indictment of labour relations in El Salvador and capitalism in general." –Times Literary Supplement (UK)
“There is much here to entertain, educate and—dare one say it of a book about coffee—stimulate.” —Financial Times
“Artfully blending together all these strands, and juggling a wide cast of characters, Mr. Sedgewick's book is a parable of how a commodity can link producers, consumers, markets and politics in unexpected ways. Like the drink it describes, it is an eye-opening, stimulating brew. “ —Economist
“With a forensic grasp of detail, Sedgewick charts the rise of mass-marketing and modern retail strategies through the story of the humble coffee bean...Coffeeland’s poignant message runs wider still…the story of coffee, today’s ’ ’unrivaled work drug’, is also the story of globalisation.” —Oliver Balch, Literary Review
"Equal parts historical overview of coffee, of our dependence on it and a look at global economics, Coffeeland is a massively ambitious work [. . .] Sedgewick looks not only at the drink and its sources, but through a multi-disciplinary approach examines its global impact on modern society: how the world has become fueled by coffee and wholly reliant on its economic stability across the world." —Spectrum Culture
“Coffeeland will set a new standard for both the study of commodities and of hemispheric relations. Augustine Sedgewick’s book is an innovative study of work, of the work involved to produce a drink needed by workers to keep working. Sedgewick treats coffee not so much as a material commodity but rather more like intangible energy, and relates it, in provocative and convincing ways, to other combustible liquids that created the North American economy, from the fields of Central America to the factories of the northern United States.” —Greg Grandin, author of The End of the Myth
“Capitalism has remade the global countryside in radical ways. With the end of plantation slavery, new forms of that transformation emerged: Hunger supplanted shackles; the law replaced the master. Coffeeland brilliantly chronicles this most consequential revolution by telling the global history of one family. After reading Augustine Sedgewick’s fast-paced book you will never be able to think about your morning coffee in quite the same way.” —Sven Beckert, author of Empire of Cotton
"Fascinating . . . Impeccably researched . . . Coffeeland is a rich and immensely readable journey into an aspect of 21st-century life worth learning more about."—Bookpage
"In fascinating detail, historian Sedgewick explores coffee as a plant, a crop, a commodity, and a potent chemical substance." —Booklist
"Coffeeland is a bittersweet triumph." —The Irish Times
“Thought-provoking and gracefully written . . . The breadth of Sedgewick’s analysis of coffee’s place in the world economy astonishes, as does his ability to bring historical figures to life… [an] eye-opening history.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"An intriguing account that darkens the depths of that daily cup of joe." —Kirkus Reviews
“How did a cup of coffee become the everday addiction of millions? In this impressively wide-ranging, personality-filled history, Augustine Sedgewick untangles the routes that carried coffee from the slopes of El Salvador’s volcanoes to the shelves of US supermarkets. To enter Coffeeland is to visit a realm of ruthless entrepreneurs, hard-working laborers, laboratory chemists, and guerrilla fighters. You’ll leave with your appreciation for your morning brew forever enriched.” —Maya Jasanoff, author of The Dawn Watch
