Initially coffee was
prohibitively expensive particularly for the 'lower orders' but once the
Atlantic slave trade kicked off and it could be produced for half nothing prices
inevitably eased - sweeteners too could be added rather cheaply once the West
Indies indigenous populations were reduced and their former lands converted to
sugar plantations. The Tainos civilisation of Ayiti (renamed Hispaniola by the
Spanish), soon to become (by far) the world's most lucrative coffee and sugar
exporting colony, were practically obliterated within twenty years of Columbus's
arrival from an estimated 1-3 million to 30,000. Columbus had boasted of finding
large quantities of gold to the Catholic monarchs but when this became
unfeasible saw instead money-making opportunities through slave exports - '4,000
a year' could be shipped back to Spain he claimed in one letter.
Later, when the island was under joint French and Spanish dominion there were widespread boycotts of coffee drinking in Britain during Wilbeforce and Clarkson's campaign to abolish slavery which was initially supported and approved by Pitt in order to starve the French colonies of labour. According to Mary Ann McCracken, herself a life-long opponent of slavery, Thomas Russell, one of the founders of the United Irishmen always abstained from taking sugar on account of all the miseries attached to it's production. Once the French revolution broke out and the Jacobin Assembly abolished slavery themselves Pitt reversed his decision and made a deal with the French plantation colony's white landowners to annex the island into the British sphere. Sugar and coffee were (now St. Domingue's) principal exports and Pitt relied heavily on the European sweet tooth and addiction to coffee to help finance the upcoming war on revolutionary France as well sever it's most important source of funding.
The island's half a million freed slaves had other ideas though and initially began burning the hated sugar cane plantations to the ground thinking that was the only way to put a stop to their misery. A massive British expedition was authorised in 1794 to take the island, re-establish slavery and get the sugar/coffee fix flowing again and pump up the British exchequer but by 1798 after a vicious four year war 20,000 British troops lay dead and three times that number again permanently incapacitated. One third at least were Irishmen, many of whom were forcibly pressed into naval service after the militia riots of 1794 and the on-going 'pacification' campaigns that preceded the outbreak of the 1798 rebellion. Fortescue, a British historian writing after the First World War 'rediscovered' this campaign (for very little had been written of it in the interim) and declared it to be "the darkest chapter" in British military history in over two hundred years. It was pretty dark for the African ex-slaves too - 100,000 of them lost their lives fighting a war against the world's most efficient military machine and, incredibly, prevailing, and convinced thereafter that revolutionary France would protect their "Rights of Man".
It was not to be of course as the post-Thermidor French revolution fell to reactionary conservative forces where representatives from port towns, traders and mariners (the bourgeoisie) closed ranks and lobbied hard with the remaining white plantation owners (who were nevertheless spared retribution by Touissant L'Ouverture from conviction that the island must maintain it's sugar and coffee export trade) and sought to have the island re-assimilated as a slave colony. Napoleon duly dispatched an even larger force to achieve this end matching the size of the original British expedition and comprised of many of his best generals. With the help of a crippling outbreak of yellow fever it too was beaten into submission in an even bloodier and more ferocious war.
Touissant, the 'moderate' but by any yardstick visionary former slave who had an inclusive economic and political programme that would accommodate blacks, whites and mulattos and who had led the colony for almost a decade was captured (through trickery and false pretences) and led back to France where he was imprisoned and practically starved to death under the orders of Napoleon. Dessalines, the hard-liner, at this point took over the island's revolution (by now renamed Haiti in honour of the indigenous Tainos) and his methods were brutal but effective massacring without pity any whites who crossed his path - the French, in their turn after the British, beat a hasty retreat
And so the island was at last free to slip into dictatorship (as inevitably happened when the nascent Black Republic now assumed international pariah status, endured crippling sanctions and was forced on threat of invasion to pay massive reparations to compensate dispossessed French sugar planters) - with the British the following year finally abolishing the slave trade - amidst much pious self-congratulation it may be added. It took the research of a black historian writing in the 1930's (Eric Williams) - himself the descendant of West Indian slaves - to throw into relief for the first time the economic motives behind abolition, something scarcely if ever alluded in over a hundred years of Empire's predominance. Nowadays no discussion can even begin without acknowledging his work on the reasons behind abolition.
Later, when the island was under joint French and Spanish dominion there were widespread boycotts of coffee drinking in Britain during Wilbeforce and Clarkson's campaign to abolish slavery which was initially supported and approved by Pitt in order to starve the French colonies of labour. According to Mary Ann McCracken, herself a life-long opponent of slavery, Thomas Russell, one of the founders of the United Irishmen always abstained from taking sugar on account of all the miseries attached to it's production. Once the French revolution broke out and the Jacobin Assembly abolished slavery themselves Pitt reversed his decision and made a deal with the French plantation colony's white landowners to annex the island into the British sphere. Sugar and coffee were (now St. Domingue's) principal exports and Pitt relied heavily on the European sweet tooth and addiction to coffee to help finance the upcoming war on revolutionary France as well sever it's most important source of funding.
The island's half a million freed slaves had other ideas though and initially began burning the hated sugar cane plantations to the ground thinking that was the only way to put a stop to their misery. A massive British expedition was authorised in 1794 to take the island, re-establish slavery and get the sugar/coffee fix flowing again and pump up the British exchequer but by 1798 after a vicious four year war 20,000 British troops lay dead and three times that number again permanently incapacitated. One third at least were Irishmen, many of whom were forcibly pressed into naval service after the militia riots of 1794 and the on-going 'pacification' campaigns that preceded the outbreak of the 1798 rebellion. Fortescue, a British historian writing after the First World War 'rediscovered' this campaign (for very little had been written of it in the interim) and declared it to be "the darkest chapter" in British military history in over two hundred years. It was pretty dark for the African ex-slaves too - 100,000 of them lost their lives fighting a war against the world's most efficient military machine and, incredibly, prevailing, and convinced thereafter that revolutionary France would protect their "Rights of Man".
It was not to be of course as the post-Thermidor French revolution fell to reactionary conservative forces where representatives from port towns, traders and mariners (the bourgeoisie) closed ranks and lobbied hard with the remaining white plantation owners (who were nevertheless spared retribution by Touissant L'Ouverture from conviction that the island must maintain it's sugar and coffee export trade) and sought to have the island re-assimilated as a slave colony. Napoleon duly dispatched an even larger force to achieve this end matching the size of the original British expedition and comprised of many of his best generals. With the help of a crippling outbreak of yellow fever it too was beaten into submission in an even bloodier and more ferocious war.
Touissant, the 'moderate' but by any yardstick visionary former slave who had an inclusive economic and political programme that would accommodate blacks, whites and mulattos and who had led the colony for almost a decade was captured (through trickery and false pretences) and led back to France where he was imprisoned and practically starved to death under the orders of Napoleon. Dessalines, the hard-liner, at this point took over the island's revolution (by now renamed Haiti in honour of the indigenous Tainos) and his methods were brutal but effective massacring without pity any whites who crossed his path - the French, in their turn after the British, beat a hasty retreat
And so the island was at last free to slip into dictatorship (as inevitably happened when the nascent Black Republic now assumed international pariah status, endured crippling sanctions and was forced on threat of invasion to pay massive reparations to compensate dispossessed French sugar planters) - with the British the following year finally abolishing the slave trade - amidst much pious self-congratulation it may be added. It took the research of a black historian writing in the 1930's (Eric Williams) - himself the descendant of West Indian slaves - to throw into relief for the first time the economic motives behind abolition, something scarcely if ever alluded in over a hundred years of Empire's predominance. Nowadays no discussion can even begin without acknowledging his work on the reasons behind abolition.
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