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In the past two installments of this series, we discussed how the Dutch and French had managed to steal coffee seeds from the Middle East and establish their own successful plantations in the Far Eastern lands of Indonesia all the way to the New World, including Central and South America. Now there is dispute about who first brought coffee to the New World, the Dutch or the French, but their colonial legacy is undeniable.
The year after the Dutch gifted the coffee tree to the French King Lois XIV, the Dutch shipped the tree to their territories in South America. Shortly thereafter, a French naval officer resolved to bring coffee cultivation to the New World as well. With great effort, he was able to get his hands on a coffee plant from the royal French garden. He went to St. Martinique with his precious plant. It was a long and painful trip, with fellow passengers repeatedly attempting to destroy the seedlings and rip off leaves! The journey was also plagued by storms and attacks by pirates. Things got so bad, that as fresh water ran out on the ship, the Frenchman was forced to share his scarce supply of water with his plant to keep it from dying. When he finally made it to St. Martinique, he transplanted the fragile coffee tree in garden, where it was kept under armed guard until his first harvest.
Fifty years later, his arduous journey bore fruits; there were almost nineteen million coffee trees in Martinique, laying the ground for a bustling coffee trade in the West Indies, Central, and South America.
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