“The only good thing to come out of St Helena is the coffee” - How St Helenian Coffee Fuelled the Rise and Fall of Napoleon Bonaparte
What springs to your mind when you think of coffee?
Is it a gently dripping filter, the aroma of which envelops your kitchen with comforting regularity? Perhaps it is a powerful espresso, enjoyed alfresco with only a newspaper or book for company. Or maybe the word invites memories of a jovial staffroom where rapidly brewed mugs are handed out alongside horror stories from previous classes.
With approximately two billion cups consumed globally every day we can rest assured that these hastily painted vignettes are familiar to nearly all we encounter. Rare indeed is the person unacquainted with this celebrated drink. However, as with many things, coffee’s popularity has come at a cost; one not limited to the seemingly exponential increase in latte price. In this instance our relationship with the drink - here in the West and increasingly throughout the World - has become marred by our dependency on caffeine. That wonderful stimulant which provides us with a crucial daily boost to power through early morning struggles and mid-afternoon slumps. For many of us coffee has become merely a convenient and socially acceptable vehicle for caffeine to enter our bloodstream, and not necessarily a drink to celebrate in its own right.
The conglomerates, never one to miss an opportunity, have leapt upon this dependency, producing huge volumes of cheap coffee to meet customer demand for quick, affordable, and consistent cups. The coffee served in these huge establishments is all three of the above. I can admit – with a feeling of vague guilt akin to buying a plastic bag in a supermarket – that occasionally, I do frequent these establishments. Afterall they fulfil a very necessary service; where else could I get coffee on the M6? Unfortunately, the issue has arisen that Starbucks, Costa and other such companies are not content to be a part of the coffee industry; they wish to dominate it and have been extremely successful in doing so.
Undoubtedly, I count myself as one of the fortunate ones. I am consciously aware of the fact that streamlining the coffee growing, processing and brewing practices ensures a far inferior coffee is served in Starbucks than in smaller independents, or incidentally, in my kitchen. However, due to our obsession with ultra-convenient drinks from huge conglomerates, there are thousands of us who drink this drab, one-dimensional coffee every day and yet have never drunk a coffee rich in flavour and complexity. For them, the overly bitter, boring, brown liquid is all that coffee is or could be.
Countless numbers of us are ignorant of the fact that when grown, processed, and brewed consciously, coffee is a marvel, a drink as steeped in complexity and nuance as any wine. This wildly changeable flavour profile arises from numerous chemical, biological and physical influences of cultivar, coffee cherry maturity, production, processing, roasting and even cup preparation processes. However, perhaps most importantly coffee’s colonial journey - due to both trade and empire-building - from the famed Ethiopian Plateau to large swathes of the world, has resulted in massive diversity in the geography of coffee-growing locations. This has created riotously different types and flavours of coffee developing from what was once a near-homogenous population. The significance of which was readily demonstrated in 2004 when the previously uncelebrated Geisha coffee beans were transformed into one of the most flavourful coffees in the world simply by growing them at high altitudes - specifically 1500 meters above sea level – in Panama. Whilst the transformation of Panamanian Geisha is indicative of the importance of growing location, there is another, more unlikely place where coffee has found a bountiful diasporic existence. A home whose history matches the complexity of the beans themselves.
St. Helena, a remote, geographically thrilling island in the midst of the South Atlantic Ocean stands like a sentinel overwatching the seemingly limitless sea. 700 miles from any other land, St. Helena’s shoreline is made almost exclusively of vast steep sided cliffs that mark it as a natural bastion and lends true meaning to the term ‘fortress island’. It is little wonder then, that after its discovery in May 1502 by João da Nova of Portugal the island soon became an important strategic point for the collection of food and as a rendezvous for homebound Portuguese voyages from Asia. As the island is directly in line with the Trade Winds, which took ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope into the South Atlantic, it was not long before both the British and the Dutch discovered the secret at the heart of the South Atlantic and began harassing the Portuguese.
Eventually the British led by Captain John Dutton in the Marmaduke arrived at St Helena in 1659 and laid claim to the island; although it was not until after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, that the East India Company sought a Royal Charter which gave the Company the sole right to fortify and colonise the island. Despite a Dutch invasion and multiple land-based mutinies, the British still maintained a tenacious hold over St. Helena, one made possible by the delivery of goods via East India Company homecoming ships. It was one of these ships in 1733 that introduced the now rare, Green-Tipped Bourbon Arabica coffee from the fabled Port of Al-Mokha, in Yemen. The plants defied all the odds and thrived in the St Helenian sunshine. It was just as well they did for only a few decades after the plants reached St Helena, their most famous patron was soon developing his own taste for this ethereal drink. Although his first cups were not drunk amongst the plunging cliffs of St Helena, but in the romantic, cobbled streets of Paris.
Napoleon Bonaparte was a complex man who enjoyed complex coffee. So much so that he was held up as an example of its powerful benefits. As William Law stated in his 1850 book The History of Coffee, Including a Chapter on Chicory,
“[His] buoyancy of mind and energies, intellectual and physical, were never surpassed by those of any man. He abstained from the use of wines and spirituous liquors, but drank coffee at all hours of the day, to revive his spirits and invigorate his body.”
An invigorated body was vital to lead Napoleon, and consequently the French army, when marching across the majority of Europe and beyond. Whilst the physical challenges of campaigning are formidable, they cringe in comparison to the mental toll such brutal wars take. This often-overlooked fact, when coupled with society’s predisposition to lose sight of the humanness of great historical characters as much as any individual on Earth, often means that we rarely stop to think about how Napoleon coped mentally with such strain. Like many others in times of adversity, he turned to familiar comforts, relying upon his favoured drink of coffee to support and uplift him in Venice, Vienna and beyond. The magnitude of its importance to him being demonstrated by his now infamous quote,
"I would rather suffer with coffee than be senseless".
The true significance of these words was yet to be realised, however a future unimaginably rich in both coffee and suffering was initiated in the cold, endless depths of Russia. Here too previously unfathomable victories were won by the French and its caffeinated monarch. The occupation of Moscow, the jewel in an already overladen crown seemed to confirm Napoleon as the world’s most powerful man. As he rode through the Russian capital, his suffering would have been far outweighed by the exhilarating realisation of an immense ambition.
However, it was amongst the flickering shadows of St. Basil’s Cathedral that Napoleon’s words would begin to become reality. As we all know after the burning of Moscow, the flustered French began a zigzagging withdrawal that soon became a full-blown rout, the horrors of which are immortalised in Tolstoy’s notorious War & Peace. However, for Napoleon this tortuous journey was just the beginning of suffering. Denounced as Emperor and betrayed by his generals, a short period of exile to Elba was followed by an even shorter second reign. The termination of which was followed by his eventual, infamous, and ultimately fatal exile to St Helena.
We are often told to be careful about what we wish for and this writer wonders if the irony of his situation occurred to Napoleon as he sailed into Jamestown. Here he was, facing the prospect of lifelong exile on an island which incidentally produces what has been called ‘the best coffee in the world’. Could there be a more literal interpretation of ‘suffer with coffee’?
The polarity between the esteemed coffee and torturous misery is jarring, for what could be more painful for a man who wished to conquer the world than to be chained to one small part of it? And what could be more thrilling for the coffee connoisseur than to live amongst one of the most rare and treasured coffee plantations in the world? This writer has had the privilege to see Longwood House where Napoleon lived and died, and to also drink the coffee which he drank. As such, I can confirm the maddening confines he was kept in, just as I can confirm the delicate beauty of the bean; a lightly floral taste married with caramel-like sweetness.
Understandably the bountiful coffee did little to sooth Napoleon. The unending imprisonment played on his mind, driving him to a pettiness unbecoming to an Emperor. He carved holes in his house’s window shutters in order to spy on guards. He also scratched out St Helena on a globe which he was said to have spent hours wistfully perusing. He never, however turned on the island's coffee, accepting a case – despite concerns of poisoning plots - from his gaoler and then governor of the island Sir Hudson Lowe, graciously stating.
“Good coffee is a precious thing in this horrible place.”
Napoleon lived for six years on St Helena before he died from suspected arsenic poisoning, at Longwood House on the 5th May 1821. Despite this being a brief period of the island’s history it remains a defining one, and when walking along the abandoned defences which line the coast, it is easy to imagine the boom of cannon and the crack of rifle fire echoing about. However, the landscape, as well as the coffee, retains a haughtiness born from an unchanging and unchallenged permanency which seems to gently mock the other, more transient lives which call St Helena home.
Undoubtedly, the island’s geographic isolation remains its defining feature. And due to the changing nature of society, this has meant the island has become somewhere to escape to and not escape from; a notion that would be completely lost on Napoleon, this writer is sure. Coincidentally, the remoteness of St Helena has also enabled the Green-Tipped Bourbon Arabica coffee plants to retain their genetic heritage to a degree unheard of in the rest of the World, ensuring the beans continue to grow in rarity and esteem.
Jacob Smith
Jacob is a writer whose focus centres on the ever-evolving relationship between peoples. He has a long-held affinity for food and cooking, a fact chiefly attributable to his mother, Liz. Outside of writing, Jacob is the Social media and Communications Officer for Incomindios UK, the British branch of a Swiss-based indigenous rights organisation and is currently concluding his MA Conflict, Security & Development at the University of Exeter.