Posted on 09/25/2020 9:23:20 AM PDT by Pining_4_TX
Bad Beans
Coffee initially came from Ethiopia, through Yemens port of Mocha, an area under the control of the Ottoman Empire. As the demand for coffee in Europe increased, so did the price levied by the Ottomans. The Dutch East India company saw a business opportunity, planting and then importing coffee from their holdings in Java, as well as Ceylon. Within a nine-year period, imports had shifted so that 90% of coffee now came from their holdings. And while coffee proved to be a lucrative import for them, it was not the case for the farmers who received little of the payment a theme that continues to this day.
For the British, continuing to send money to the Dutch for coffee seems somehow not right. What was to become the first global corporation, the West Indies Company, instead concentrated on tea, a drink more easily prepared at home. By the mid-1700s, the greatest influencers of the time, the Royal family, drank tea, elevating its importance and making it the drink of choice for the refined or wannabes.
(Excerpt) Read more at acsh.org ...
BS. Their "perpetual" poverty is not due to the lack of growing coffee or racism. It began with a corrupt gov't established after the revolution by "Papa Doc" duvalier in 1957 that bankrupted the country and continues today. Foreign capital avoids investing in Haiti specifically because of its corrupt government.
Bookmark
The same "race mixture" lives on both sides of the forested/deforested line here. One side has voodoo and santeria style religion, the other side is/was Christian-based. I wonder which is which?
Brazil was a Portuguese colony, and it has often been condemned for its history of slavery. Portugal, oddly enough because it was the center for ransoming European captives in the Mediterranean from their Muslim captors in North Africa, was supposedly how chattel slavery - nearly dead since the time of the Romans - returned to Europe.
Some of the intermediaries in the ransoms would keep 20% (a quinta) of whatever price they had negotiated with the Muslims. And then one day it occurred to them that they could get involved in the biz themselves....
Chattel slavery is where the slave is just a possession with no human rights and was practiced by the Muslims. The British got in on it too and also ended up practicing chattel slavery.
For a little extra:
Carlos Sanchez, the actor who played the original Juan Valdez from Columbia, died December, 2018. He was 83 and he had been working for the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia since 1958 and was replaced in 2006. It is not said what he died from and his mule’s name was Conchita. No information was listed for the mule.
rwood
I recall a picture like that in National Geographic; it looked like a straight line separating lush forest from actual desert (shot from a helicopter, IIRC). The explanation was that as Haitians cut down their trees for firewood they never bothered replanting - ANYTHING.
They pride themselves on being the second independent country in the Western Hemisphere (1804), but there is a price: After killing most whites during and after the struggle, they are basically stuck with 1804 technology (at best).
I missed that part. You are correct, of course.
Ha, ha, this is probably what the woke crowd would love to see happen.
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