The Coffee Planter of Saint Domingo
Author: Laborie, P. J
Place of Publication: London
Publisher: Printed for T. Cadell & W. Davies
Publication Date: M.DCC.XCVIII. [1798]
Physical Description: xii, 198, 145, [5] p., 22 leaves of plates (some folded): ill., 22 cm. (8vo)
Description:
The hills that rose above the plains of Saint Domingue provided convenient sites
for the layered terraces on which coffee beans could be grown. A significant
number of the colony’s coffee plantations were owned and managed by people of
color. Coffee’s importance to the French colonial economy grew dramatically in
the period after the Seven Years' War (1756-63). In this book published in 1798,
as the British occupation of the western and southern provinces of Saint
Domingue was coming to an end, a white coffee planter named P. J. Laborie
offered to share his expertise for the benefit of his British counterparts in Jamaica.
Laborie’s work was a very important one to describe the cultivation of coffee in
Saint Domingue before 1789. In the 22 engraved plates one can see the
machinery used to grind and extract the coffee beans, then highly coveted in
Great Britain’s coffee houses. One can also see the backbreaking work involved
in order to produce the high yields of beans given in the tables contained within
the volume. This work is invaluable for any commercial study of the coffee
industry in the French or British colonial West Indies. The appendix provides rare
details about the British occupied zone during the revolution.
Notes: E798 .L123c