Coffee: The Epic of a Commodity (19 page)

For while impoverished Germany was finding it a great effort to relieve the siege of Vienna, the power and the wealth of Europe had flowed away to the northwest, to the Dutch capital and seaport of Amsterdam. In 1683, the year when Vienna was invested by the Turks, the three chief western powers, Holland, England, and France, had, in all, a mercantile marine comprising of twenty thousand ships. Of these, the Dutch had sixteen thousand, England thirty-five hundred, and France no more than five hundred. If the Hollanders had cared, by attacking Islam from the east they could have made the onslaught of the Ottomans against Central Europe an anachronism. But they did not care. Their vessels were sailing round the Cape of Good Hope to the Persian Gulf and the Indies. Not with the object of seizing Arabia, or of shaking the power of the Crescent. Their goals were Hindustan, Malacca, and Java. They wanted to dispossess the Portuguese. The Dutch flag soon replaced that of Portugal above the forts in the Malay Archipelago.

When the Hollanders landed in Sumatra, Celebes, and the Moluccas, they felt, as the Portuguese had felt before them, that they were entering a new world. These great islands were a warm garden, a polychrome intermingling of land and water. The mellow horizon was never without a landfall. Here conical islands projected; there mountain chains loomed over the sea, all thickly grown, the slopes slipping down into red, green, and golden waters. Those who were approaching land could smell its aromatic and effervescent waters miles upon miles away. The primeval forests were full of strange mammals, reptiles, and birds.

On many of the hitherto undiscovered islands, the life of the natives was still pleasant enough. As in the legendary Garden of Eden, the earth brought forth its fruits without any need for human labour. The gods of the air had planted the trees. There they stood, enormous in height, surrounded by a vigorous undergrowth, and the winds saw to the dissemination of their seed. Mango-trees flourished, grapefruits in plenty, palms abounded, among them the bountiful breadfruit tree. Then there was the durian, a huge spiny fruit with an offensive odour but a taste that is ambrosial to those who have acquired a liking for it. Coco-nut palms in profusion. In Sumatra, the natives had trained monkeys to climb the trees and throw down the huge nuts. Dates, bananas, pomegranates, and many other fruits grew without the trouble of cultivating them. The Javanese, as aforesaid, had long since been made acquainted the art of rice-growing. The damp, hot-house lands of the Malay Archipelago were not pestilent marshes like those of Africa. The Javanese climate was one of eternal summer, though troubled by daily rainstorms and frequent thunder. The countless island peaks gathered the vapours that the Indian Ocean gave off from its glowing mirror. Frequently the clouds discharged their waters, and the murmuring rain moistened the humus of the forests and washed down fertilizing mineral salts from the sides of the volcanoes. The foot-hills were terraced, and the waters were distributed to the terraces by canals and sluices. In this brown and variegated landscape, across which the heavy, grey clouds of the monsoon blew, rice prospered abundantly. In the “nursery,” before it was planted out, the young rice-plant made emerald-green plots, contrasting strongly with the violet background of the hills so that the Hollanders were startled thereby. But for the prevailing heat, which made them sweat unceasingly, they might have believed themselves, at the river-mouths, to be among the green polders of their fertile native country.

Still there was a spirit of evil and of death abroad among the islands. Amid the tree-ferns, he displayed the symbols of his destructive supremacy, blocks of vitreous black obsidian. Or a crater which for hundreds of years had been quiescent exhaled whitish-yellow clouds of sulphurous vapour. This volcanic deity, who had created the whole region, could destroy it when the fancy seized him; and often he agitated it with earthquakes.

In Java he produced lakes of warm liquid mud. A porridge-like pale-blue milky substance boiled in great mountain cauldrons. Birds that winged their way amid the vapours rising from these cauldrons fell dead into the seething mass. “The volcano swallows birds,” said the natives with a shudder, as they stood bare-footed, painfully enduring the heat emanating from the adjoining rocks. But the Dutch were not frightened. They had thick soles to their leather boots, so that their feet were not scorched. Their eyes were blue and steadfast, and were not to be intimidated by any sight of horror.

The Dutch were anything but dreamers, being distinguished in that from all other peoples. Distinguished from the Spaniards, the French, and the Germans, and especially from the Portuguese, who, when engaged in the most concrete activities, are accustomed to mingle in their undertakings the energy of dreams. The Dutch did not dream of fame or of world dominion; they did not dream the mystical dream of extending the realm of Christ. All they wanted was to pursue a profitable trade.

They were a calculating race, these men who had grown up under the damp and heavy skies of Amsterdam; black-clad Mynheers, such as Rembrandt has depicted for us. The noises of the seaport did not intrude into their council-chamber, where the long and empty table symbolized the greatness of the world. Outside, the seasons seemed to be perpetual autumn, and harsh winds blew falling leaves into the canals. There they sat smoking long clay pipes–“churchwardens,” the English call them—while billet after billet of wood was consumed in the big tiled stove. Here the merchants reckoned up the capital that would be needed for the long voyage to the East Indies, for which the Portuguese had broken trail. Here shipping companies were founded, to run joint-stock enterprises. Weapons were shipped as well as merchandise. The captains insisted that their sailors must be armed. To begin with, of course, no one thought of war. But when the men in possession, the Portuguese owners of the archipelago, received the Dutchmen with cannon-fire, the merchants gave them a Roland for their Oliver. Then, just as the Dutch had learned in Brabant that Spaniards could be killed, so did they learn in the East Indies that the cousins of the Spaniards, the Portuguese, were likewise mortal men.

Business throve, and an increasing number of mercantile competitors equipped new fleets. Then, in 1602, the State took a hand in the game. It united the private competitors into an “imperialist” joint-stock company, giving these organized merchant-adventurers not only legal protection, but also sovereignty in the lands they were trading with and settling. On March 20, 1602, the Dutch East India Company was formed. It was not the first of its kind, for the English had been beforehand in the field, founding the English East India Company incorporated by Queen Elizabeth on December 31, 1600, under the title of “The Governors and Company of Merchants of London trading with the East Indies.”

Pro-coffee engraving (about 1730)

The Townswoman’s breakfast (1780)

Frau Kaffeeschwester and Herr Bierwanst (about 1790)

State coffee-pot of Augustus the Strong (1701)

English coffee-pot (1681)

Coffee-mills, pot, and sugar bowls and tongs (Louis-Quinze)

The relation of the Dutch East India Company to the homeland was that of a private trading association which had bought the monopoly of carrying on commerce eastward of the Cape of Good Hope. But on the great islands on either side of the Strait of Sunda, it ruled as a sultan who does not buy the produce of his subjects, but demands its surrender without compensation. The suzerainty of the rulers of Holland did not extend into these island realms. It was met half-way by the home-flowing current of gold, and, as long as this current continued, the Dutch government was glad to renew the rights of the company. Every twenty-one years a fresh charter was granted.

The Javanese had welcomed the coming of the Hollanders with songs and dances, but their joy was short-lived. The Dutch were ruthless exploiters, until, at length, the gentle Javanese were stimulated into showing their discontent. One morning the new rulers found that the palisades of a fort they had just built had been destroyed. The natives thought there were more than enough strongholds in the archipelago. Inquiry, trial, and judgment followed. The rebellious Javanese, it seemed, had been stirred up by English agents—and there can be no doubt that English ships, expectant, were anchored in the neighbourhood.