Coffeeland A History
Coffeeland A History by Augustine Sedgewick, published by Penguin Publishing Group in 2021, explores the significant role of coffee in the global economy and its evolution over the past 400 years. This 448-page book delves into the story of coffee, tracing its journey from the volcanic highlands of El Salvador, where James Hill established a prominent coffee dynasty, to its presence in modern cafés and households. Sedgewick examines how coffee became an everyday necessity and a valuable commodity, revealing the complexities behind its widespread popularity.
Readers will find a detailed account of coffee’s transformation, highlighting the impact of plantation agriculture and industrial innovations on the coffee industry. The narrative addresses themes of globalization, productivity, and the socio-economic implications of coffee cultivation, particularly in relation to inequality and violence in El Salvador. Through this historical lens, Coffeeland presents a comprehensive view of how coffee reshaped not only the tropics but also our understanding of energy and consumption in contemporary society.
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*Winner of the 2022 Cherasco International Prize*
‘Thoroughly engrossing’ Michael Pollan, The Atlantic
‘Wonderful, energising’ Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian
Coffee is one of the most valuable commodities in the history of the global economy and the world’s most popular drug. The very word ‘coffee’ is one of the most widespread on the planet. Augustine Sedgewick’s brilliant new history tells the hidden and surprising story of how this came to be, tracing coffee’s 400-year transformation into an everyday necessity.
The story is one that few coffee drinkers know. Coffeeland centres on the volcanic highlands of El Salvador, where James Hill, born in the slums of nineteenth-century Manchester, founded one of the world’s great coffee dynasties. Adapting the innovations of the industrial revolution to plantation agriculture, Hill helped to turn El Salvador into perhaps the most intensive monoculture in modern history, a place of extraordinary productivity, inequality and violence.
The book follows coffee from the Hill family plantations into the United States, through the San Francisco roasting plants into supermarkets, kitchens and work places, and finally into today’s omnipresent cafés. Sedgewick reveals the unexpected consequences of the rise of coffee, which reshaped large areas of the tropics, transformed understandings of energy, and ultimately made us dependent on a drug served in a cup.
‘Gripping’ The Spectator
‘An eye-opening, stimulating brew’ The Economist
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