The Impact Of Coffee On The Ottoman Empire, London, Saint-Domingue, Jamaica

In this paper I will argue that the global trade of coffee had dramatically uneven social impacts on the Ottoman Empire, London, Saint-Domingue, and Jamaica. In the Ottoman Empire, it led to the rise of a subversive social space, the coffeehouse, which dramatically loosened social control and increased social mobility. In London, coffeehouses were also disruptive in increasing social mobility and academic discourse, but lacked much of the revolutionary and illicit elements of their Ottoman counterparts. On the other side of the world, in the Carribean coffee plantations of Saint-Domingue and Jaimaica, the global trade of coffee lead to an increase of social control and an entrenchment of social mobility.
To establish a historical context, the
Gens de couleur were a class of “free” people in Saint-Domingue who were mixed-race between african and european. They had few rights and limited credit and capital, but were not enslaved.The global trade of coffee led to the systematic discrimination of this group. Coffee exports began their dramatic rise in the 1760s—gens de couleur were among the largest groups of coffee growers, and the bulk of that production came from the small scale plantations they controlled During the massive coffee boom of the 1760's, many gens de couleur, who were prospering economically, begin to show “...their wealth, their education, and even their color with what some Whites—who only had the purity of their blood—regarded as insolence.”This resulted in a massive pushback from the white government. In 1760 it became a requirement to state one's race in most parish records, in 1773 there were attempts to stop natural children (who were mixed-race) of white males from using their father's names, and in 1775 a new legal offense was passed, “disrespect” of authority, which was a major attack on civil rights of gens de couleur. 29 Hilliard d'Auberteuil, a spokesperson of the elite, outlined the intended goal of
In the year 1807, Jamaican plantation owners were met with a dilemna: the British had outlawed the atlantic slave trade, which meant that they would not be able to import the slaves necessary in order to meet the rising world demand for coffee. Because of this, the procreation of slave women was tightly controlled, in order to maximize the slave population. Enslaved women were punished for abortions, and strongly encouraged to become pregnant. “Women under slavery were subject to extreme forms of sexual violence,” they were raped and controlled sexually. In vulgar terms. they were considered “breeding stock.” The global trade of coffee played an instrumental role in the subjugation of these women.
The global trade of coffee had very different impacts in each of the four regions outlined.
In the Ottoman Empire, coffeehouses were centers of social interaction, and bans were simply circumvented. In London, private clubs and coffeehouses challenged social norms and