Wednesday 20 May 2009

The competition of Coffee colony


Recently, I was trying to find the way in which coffee could make its mark in world history. Before coffee has become the world's second largest export after oil today, there should be a process that initiate such phenomenon.  

I found some interesting facts leading to an assumption. 

Eventhough coffee was founded in Africa, presumably in Ethiopia, it only began to spread and became an export crop from the Arab world to Europe in the 17th century. Coffee-houses had become an urban scene in Constantinople only around the beginning of the century and London was the next destination. Coffee trading during the time was mainly under the Levant Company.   

The first coffee-house in England, in fact in the Christendom, was established in London perhaps around 1652-1654 at Cornhill. This claim confutes the old one that the first coffee-house was set up in Oxford. (Markman Ellis, The Coffee-House: A Cultural History, 2004, 29-30) Throughout the 17 th century, coffee was mainly from Southern Arabia or the port at Mocha. 

An important change occured at the turn of the century, when the Dutch East India Company (VOC) set up a coffee plantation in Java, in which the first coffee tree was planted in 1696. In 1711, the first coffee export from Java under the VOC was 900 ponds. The figure breathtakingly increased into 6 million ponds per year only two decades later! Coffee value had overrun other cash crop e.g. pepper and cloves. (John Keay, The Spice Route, 2005, 252)

So the Dutch colony in Java(and some other parts of the archipelagos), was the coffee colony throughout the first half  of the 18th century. The main destination of coffee from Java was Europe. 

Nothing is certain. Towards the end of the 18th century, coffee had become a hot prospect in Brazil. After the Belgian monk introduced coffee to Rio de Janeiro in 1774, he found that coffee loves Brazil's terra roxa. The consequence was inevitable; money flowed into coffee plantation business very quickly. 

From Rio to Sao Paulo, and then to the caribbeans; coffee moved from Java to Brazil at the beginning of the 19th century, and is still there to the present. This left Java with the new crop: sugar (which was also quite successful under the cultivation system). 

Maybe the competition between European power generated this phenomenon? Or was it the work of the invisible hand? What do AP readers think? 




 

Sunday 17 May 2009

the leisure class


I've begun reading Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure class (1973) for a couple of chapters now. 

It is interesting how his approach (in early chapters) is an anthropological and sociological observation, which is different from his comtemporary economists. 

The earliest stage of human society, the primitive savagery or the peaceable, did not enable the emergence of the leisure class. Yet the leisure class began to build up during the transition from such peaceable society into barbarism, or warlike habit of life. 

There were two natures of work in consequense: exploit and drudgery. 

'Exploit' belonged to those of a higher place in society and 'drudgery' was on the opposite. 

The important change was not the frequent of war or how the war was fought, but human's perspective had changed: fight was used to justify or judge facts and events in the society. 

Accordingly, after the emergence of 'ownership', Veblen introduces the concept of 'pecuniary emulation'. It is when human competed to possess private property. People with large ownership (wealth) belonged to the 'exploit'. 

The demand had arisen: the weathy wanted to divorce from productive work. This is not to say that they were indolence, but rather they must maintain their esteem (as a wealthy bunch) by making their wealth evidenced (in non-productive consumption of time)!  

This is the leisure class. 

I have just a question to discuss with AP readers: What about the writer(in Southeast Asia) today? If he already has a full-time job (which is a productive work) but he considers writing as his leisure, whereas he could earn some money by publishing his books. 

Is he a member of Veblen's  leisure class?