Coffee versus Chicory in the Habsburg Semiperiphery: Fields of Productive Exploitation

• In Event: Circuits of Extractivism and Consumption in Eastern Europe

Abstract

In the second half of the 19th century, coffee consumption in the Habsburg Empire largely relied on trade with Brazil, primarily due to the prolonged existence of slavery there. This made coffee more affordable to European traders and consumers. Simultaneously, the coffee substitute business boomed, establishing a range of production sites across the Habsburg Empire.
Drawing on archival records of the Austro-Hungarian branch of the Franck company, a major player in the domestic coffee substitute market, and referencing various popular press sources (periodicals, children’s books, popular science literature), I explore the connection between the pattern of chicory fields, mostly planted on the periphery of the Habsburg Empire, the factories producing coffee substitute products, and the peculiarities of coffee trade.
In the first part of my paper, I concentrate on the extractivist aspects of coffee and chicory production and trade. In the second part, I delve into the forms of workers' struggles within the coffee substitute industry and analyze how the production of coffee knowledge either contained or ignored aspects of workers' exploitation and forced labor under slavery. I argue that considering coffee and chicory together provides new insights into (intra)imperial economic dynamics, labor and food history.

Author

• Lea Horvat, U of Jena (Germany)