Summary of Mark Pendergrast's Uncommon Grounds

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The birthplace of coffee, the ancient land of Abyssinia, is also the birthplace of Ethiopian culture. It is likely that, as in the legend, the beans and leaves of bunn were simply chewed, but the inventive Ethiopians quickly graduated to more palatable ways of getting their caffeine fix.
#2 The history of coffee is long and complex, but it all started in the fifteenth century when someone roasted the beans, ground them, and made an infusion.
#3 The Arabs took to coffee, and by the end of the fifteenth century, it had become a lucrative trade item. The drink gained in popularity throughout the sixteenth century, and it also gained its reputation as a troublemaking brew.
#4 The first half of the seventeenth century saw the European adoption of coffee. Pope Clement VIII, who died in 1605, supposedly tasted the Muslim drink at the behest of his priests, who wanted him to ban it. But Europeans soon discovered the social as well as medicinal benefits of the Arabian drink.

Sujets

• Business History
• Corporate History
• Economics
• Business

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 23 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822546769
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Mark Pendergrast's Uncommon Grounds
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The birthplace of coffee, the ancient land of Abyssinia, is also the birthplace of Ethiopian culture. It is likely that, as in the legend, the beans and leaves of bunn were simply chewed, but the inventive Ethiopians quickly graduated to more palatable ways of getting their caffeine fix.

#2

The history of coffee is long and complex, but it all started in the fifteenth century when someone roasted the beans, ground them, and made an infusion.

#3

The Arabs took to coffee, and by the end of the fifteenth century, it had become a lucrative trade item. The drink gained in popularity throughout the sixteenth century, and it also gained its reputation as a troublemaking brew.

#4

The first half of the seventeenth century saw the European adoption of coffee. Pope Clement VIII, who died in 1605, supposedly tasted the Muslim drink at the behest of his priests, who wanted him to ban it. But Europeans soon discovered the social as well as medicinal benefits of the Arabian drink.

#5

The French were late to the coffeehouse party, but once they got there, they showed a great affinity for the beverage. The cafés became egalitarian meeting places where men and women could consort without impropriety.

#6

Coffee arrived in Vienna in 1683, and was consumed by the Ottoman Empire during their siege of the city. The fleeing Turks left behind five hundred huge sacks filled with strange-looking beans that the Viennese thought must be camel fodder.

#7

Coffee became popular in Europe in the 1670s. It was initially popular among the upper classes, but by 1732 it had become controversial enough to inspire Johann Sebastian Bach to write his Coffee Cantata.

#8

The first coffeehouses were opened in England in 1650, and they quickly became popular. They were chaotic and smelly, but they also provided England’s first egalitarian meeting place.

#9

The British began to drink tea instead of coffee. The coffeehouses turned into private men’s clubs or chophouses by 1730, while the huge new public tea gardens appealed to men, women, and children alike.

#10

The American colonists emulated the coffee boom of the mother country, with the first American coffeehouse opening in Boston in 1689. In the colonies, there was not such a clear distinction between the tavern and the coffeehouse.

#11

In 1714, the Dutch gave a healthy coffee plant to the French government, and nine years later, an obsessed French naval officer, Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu, introduced coffee cultivation to the French colony of Martinique.

#12

The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain in the 1700s, transformed lives, attitudes, and eating habits. People began working in textile and iron mills, and they had less time to prepare meals. They began drinking coffee instead.

#13

Coffee was initially brought to the Caribbean to harvest sugarcane, but when the French colonists grew coffee in San Domingo in 1734, they required additional African slaves to work the plantations.

#14

The Dutch jumped into the gap to supply the coffee shortfall with Java beans. While they did not routinely rape or torture their laborers, they did enslave them.

#15

The price of coffee swung wildly throughout the nineteenth century, due to speculation, politics, and the hazards of war. It had become an international commodity that completely transformed the economy, ecology, and politics of Latin America.

#16

The coffee bean would help shape laws and governments, and it was the engine for growth in Brazil, which became the dominant force in the coffee world during this period.

#17

The Brazilian coffee industry was based around the slave trade. When Britain began to outlaw the slave trade in 1831, the Brazilians made the importation of slaves illegal, but did not enforce the law. Some 2 million already in the country remained in bondage.

#18

Slavery was not limited to the United States. In Brazil, slavery was maintained longer than in any other Western Hemisphere country. In 1871, Pedro II, who had freed his own slaves more than thirty years earlier, declared the law of the free womb, which guaranteed a gradual extinction of slavery.

#19

The Brazilian government and industries heavily rely on the coffee industry, which has led to devastating effects on the environment. The Brazilian farmer, who was interviewed for this, said that his land was always tired after a heavy bearing season, so he would just abandon it and clear new swaths of forest.

#20

The Brazilian agricultural methods required the least amount of effort. The coffee thrived best in disintegrated volcanic rock mixed with decayed vegetation, which describes the red clay, the terra roxa, of Brazil. The moment of flowering, followed by the first growth of the tiny berry, was crucial for coffee growers.

#21

The traditional method of removing the bean, known as the dry method, is still the preferred method of processing Brazilian coffee. The beans may develop mold or other unpleasant tastes if they are not spread thinly enough.

#22

By the late nineteenth century, the Rio coffee lands were dying. The Rio region was quickly ruined by a plant whose destructive form of cultivation left forests razed, natural reserves exhausted, and general decadence in its wake, wrote Eduardo Galeano in Open Veins of Latin America.

#23

The colono system in Brazil produced coffee more cheaply than slavery, and the Brazilian coffee farmers led the charge for abolition. But when the aging Dom Pedro II was out of the country, his daughter, Princess-Regent Isabel, signed the Golden Law on May 13, 1888, liberating the remaining three-quarters of a million slaves.

#24

The history of Guatemala demonstrates the economic disaster that can be brought on by the coffee boom. The country’s indigenous people were treated terribly by the liberal Mariano Gálvez government, which favored the rising middle class.

#25

The Liberals in Guatemala, led by General Justo Rufino Barrios, implemented a series of liberal reforms in 1871 that made it easier to grow and export coffee. These reforms came at the expense of the Indians and their land.

#26

The Liberals in Guatemala, like the Brazilians, tried to attract immigrant labor, but these attempts largely failed. They had to rely on the Indian, who had little incentive to work. The Liberals solved the problem through forced labor and debt peonage.

#27

Between 1877 and 1890, the Liberals in Guatemala passed a series of laws to help immigrants obtain land, granting a ten-year tax exemption and a six-year holiday from import duties on tools and machines. The Germans, many of whom were fleeing Bismarck’s militarism, flocked to Guatemala.

#28

The German settlers in Guatemala treated the Indians there as virtual slaves, paying them very little and keeping them in a feudal system of debt peonage.

#29

The coffee industry developed in Central America during the late nineteenth century. The Brazils, a type of coffee that was not as harsh in the cup as the Milds, gained a reputation for lower quality.

#30

The history of coffee in Guatemala is a history of inequality, social injustice, and the enslavement of the indigenous peoples. It was a pattern that was set, with large fincas owned by ladinos, Germans, and other foreigners who earned huge profits in good years, working migrant labor forces forced down from the highlands.

#31

The pattern of disenfranchisement and abuse of labor was repeated in neighboring countries, except that the size of the typical coffee farm was smaller in Mexico, and the Indians in El Salvador and Nicaragua were not so easily subjugated.

#32

The Costa Rican coffee industry developed gradually, without the need for repressive government intervention. Because the farms were generally so small, they could not afford their own wet processing mills, so the beneficio owners had a great deal of clout and could set artificially low prices.

#33

Costa Rica was a colony of Britain, but Germans quickly took over the country's trade, and by the early twentieth century, they owned many of the beneficios and larger coffee farms in the country. However, Costa Rica offered opportunities for the hardworking native poor to join the coffee social elite.

#34

The coffee industry was extremely harsh on the native populations it exploited. The workday for the coolies began at 5 a. m. They were paid five annas a day, a pathetic amount, and were often treated poorly.

#35

The coffee rust, a fungus that attacks the coffee tree, is the main reason why coffee plantations in Ceylon have been failing. The tree is otherwise very hardy.

#36

The American thirst for coffee was slow to develop in a young country whose citizens preferred alcohol. It was not until after the War of 1812 that the taste for coffee grew among Americans.

#37

In the mid-nineteenth century, Americans bought green coffee beans at the local general store, then roasted and ground them at home. Roasting the beans in a frying pan on the wood stove required twenty minutes of constant stirring, and often produced uneven roasts.

#38

The price of coffee fell dramatically in the 1820s and 1830s, as increasing production continued to overtop burgeoning consumption. The low prices that were hurting the coffee growers contributed to the growing popularity of the drink among the lower classes.

#39

The Civil War reduced coffee consumption in America, as the Union government levied a 4-cent duty on imported beans and blockaded Southern ports, preventing the rebels from receiving any coffee. However, the war gave soldiers a permanent taste for the drink.

#40

Two inventions that revolutionized th