Coffeeland

February 1, 2020
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.

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Starred review from February 10, 2020
In this thought-provoking and gracefully written debut, Sedgewick, an American studies professor at City University of New York, chronicles the 20th-century transformation of El Salvador into “one of the most intensive monocultures in modern history” and the concurrent rise in Americans’ thirst for coffee. According to Sedgewick, El Salvador’s shift from communal subsistence farming to staple crop production was led by James Hill, an Englishman whose plantation empire was staffed by indigenous men (“mozos”) who picked the beans and women (“limpiadoras”) who cleaned them. Though Hill and his heirs reaped immense riches from coffee production, their employees suffered; an American observer claimed in 1931 that El Salvador’s inequality compared to that of pre-Revolutionary France. Meanwhile, thanks to Hill’s distribution plans and the invention of vacuum-sealed tin cans that preserved the beans’ freshness, the U.S. became the world’s biggest coffee market. By the second half of the 20th century, the “coffee break” had become such an important part of the working day that the Supreme Court enshrined it as an employee’s right, and coffee made up 90% of El Salvador's exports. 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. Coffee connoisseurs will relish this eye-opening history. Agent: Wendy Strothman, the Strothman Agency.

April 1, 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

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2020
Not simply the drink of choice for tens of millions worldwide, coffee is also the world's most ubiquitous drug. One of the earliest commodities to launch a worldwide market, coffee established an interconnected economy involving not just itself, but chinaware, glass, water, plastics, and more. Further, the industry employs growers, shippers, roasters, baristas, servers, and others worldwide. And in countries where coffee production is a monoculture, coffee virtually controls governments. In fascinating detail, historian Sedgewick explores coffee as a plant, a crop, a commodity, and a potent chemical substance. He delves into its history, especially the ways in which coffee has affected the nation of El Salvador. Beginning with the arrival of Englishman James Hill in 1889, a few canny merchants established coffee plantations on the slopes of El Salvador's volcanoes. Through scientific management, they tightly controlled the lives of workers, to the point of carefully measuring out laborers' daily rations of tortillas and beans. Their grip on the El Salvadorian government was nearly unshakeable, and corruption and wealth inequities live on into the present. Includes extensive bibliography.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)