A Tour of My Coffee Plantation Quiz

Answer: He blessed coffee as a "Christian drink".

The first recorded use of coffee is in Ethiopia. A story, almost certainly apocryphal, attributes its discovery to a goatherd named Kaldi. He noticed that his goats began to dance after chewing on the beans. He, too, tried them and became just as frisky as the goats were.

During the Middle Ages, coffee was exported to Yemen and beyond. The earliest references to coffee appearing in Europe come from the sixteenth century. In what may be another apocryphal story, Pope Clement was asked to place a ban on the drink because it came "from the infidels". Instead, he tried a cup and declared it so delicious that he thought it a pity that the infidels should have sole usage.

The coffee plantation owned by the Dumont family was in the southern Brazilian state of Sao Paulo. Alberto's father, Henrique, was a French engineer who had come to Brazil to work on designing part of the country's railway system. When this was completed, he purchased a tract of land and began coffee production. The plantation was so large that over 60 miles of railway line were installed to transport the beans. Alberto was the sixth of eight children and lived here until 1891 when the family moved back to Paris after an accident paralysed his father.

Answer: 3,500,000

Coffee plants came to Brazil by a very roundabout route. The plants had been very closely guarded but, in 1616, some specimens were smuggled out of Yemen and into the possession of the Dutch East India Company. The company then began growing coffee in suitable Dutch-owned territories. In 1713, a plant was presented to the French king, Louis XIV, and this was kept at the royal botanical garden in Paris. A French naval officer, Gabriel de Clieu, applied for permission to take a cutting to the Caribbean island of Martinique where he believed conditions would be ideal for growing coffee. Permission was refused but, undeterred, he smuggled a plant to Martinique anyway. Coffee soon became a major crop in the West Indies and, from there, it finally reached Brazil in 1727.

It is estimated that, of the total number of slaves taken from Africa, more than a third came to Brazil. So great was the importance of the coffee industry to the Brazilian economy and such was the reliance of the industry upon slaves that, although the government began passing legislation to abolish slavery in 1831, it wasn't until 1888 that the last slaves were finally freed. Slaves had originally been brought to Brazil to work on sugar production but, from the 1830s onwards, coffee overtook sugar as the dominant crop.

Alberto's early creations were dirigible balloons rather than aeroplanes. He won the Deutsch prize in the simply named "Dirigible No. 6". Another of his balloons, "Dirigible No. 9" or "Baladeuse", was designed for urban travel and was small enough to be used to travel around Paris. If Alberto was eating out, he would land and tether the airship outside the restaurant, ready to retrieve it later for the journey home.

Answer: Lloyds of London, insurance syndicate

The world's first recorded coffee house was opened in Istanbul (then Constantinople) in 1475 and this was followed, in 1529, by the first coffee house in Europe, established in Vienna. Fleeing Turkish soldiers left behind their sacks of beans and an enterprising local merchant took full advantage. The first coffee house in Britain dates from 1652 and Italy (1654), France (1672) and Germany (1673) soon followed. There is an often repeated claim that the word "tips", meaning gratuities, dates back to the early British coffee houses as an acronym, "To Insure Prompt Service". The precise derivation is not entirely clear but this explanation appears to be an urban myth as its usage predates this period.

Edward Lloyd opened his coffee house in Tower Street, London in 1688. It became a meeting place for ship-owners and merchants, from which grew the institution now known as Lloyds of London. For the record, Coutts & Co., bankers to the British royal family, was founded by a Scotsman, John Campbell, as Campbell's Bank in 1692. The Bank of England was established two years later by another Scot, William Paterson.

Empress Eugenie (or María Eugenia Ignacia Augustina de Palafox de Guzmán Portocarrero y Kirkpatrick, to give her full name) was the consort of Napoleon III, the last emperor of France. She married him in 1853, at the age of 26, and, upon his being deposed in 1871, moved with him to England. He died in 1873 and she in 1920. She was a known guest at Alberto's dinner parties. For anyone curious at the presence of Kirkpatrick in her name, it comes from her mother being half Scottish.

Answer: Bach

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) is a French composer whose most notable works include, "La Mer", "L'Apres-midi d'un Faune" and "Clair de Lune". As this is an imaginary tour, I have blurred history slightly. Alberto and Claude overlapped in Paris for two decades and probably did meet although I can offer you no direct evidence.

Johann Sebastian Bach's "Kaffeekantate" was first performed at Zimmerman's coffee house in Leipzig sometime between 1732 and 1734. The daughter, Lieschen, refuses to give up her daily intake of three bowls of coffee. Her father's first tack is to threaten to deny her various pleasures that include walking out, fashionable clothes, ribbon for her bonnet and watching the world from her window. None of these is sufficiently powerful to change her mind. Next, he threatens that he will not allow her to take a husband. This appears to have the desired effect and she promises not to drink any more coffee. Lieschen, however, has the final word. She secretly lets it be known to potential suitors that any marriage contract must contain a clause that permits her to make coffee whenever she wants.

Answer: Honoré de Balzac

As a young child, Alberto was an avid reader of Verne's novels which inspired him in his design of flying machines. Both Verne and H. G. Wells sent congratulatory telegrams upon the winning of the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize.

Balzac's excessive consumption of coffee led to a weakened heart and stomach cramps, possibly stomach cancer. In "The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee", he wrote of the creative impulse brought on by caffeine:
"From that moment on, everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination's orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink - for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder."

Answer: Karl Marx

It may not have been of much use, but Marx was the only one of the four alive in 1848. O'Higgins and Bolívar predate him whilst Che Guevara is twentieth century.

Marx was addressing the Democratic Association of Brussels. He was criticising the fact that those who own the means of production have no interest in the local environment or workforce. The speech went on to predict that, by the end of the century, significant coffee production would have moved away from the West Indies due to cheaper costs. In 1848, production from the West Indies had already begun to wane as many plantations failed to survive emancipation. By 1901, it is Brazil that is supplying 75% of total world production.

To place Alberto Santos Dumont together with Lenin at this time is, I confess, another flight of fancy. Lenin (1870-1924), lived in Paris between 1908 and 1912 so it is not inconceivable that they met in this period but, again, I can find no clear evidence.

Answer: Europe

Plantation owners had begun to look to immigrant labour, known as colonos, from the middle of the nineteenth century. The first immigrants were employed under a form of bonded labour. Their initial expenses were paid for by an employer to whom they were bound until the debt was paid off. In 1884, the situation changed when the Brazilian government agreed to pay the immigration costs of migrants. It is estimated that the influx, in the state of Sao Paulo alone, amounted to nearly a million immigrants, many from Germany and Italy. (Source : "The Cambridge Survey of World Migration" by Robin Cohen)

Alberto was the true son of an engineer and loved invention. His first airships were dirigible balloons. He then set himself the challenge of building a heavier-than-air machine. This was completed by 1906 when, before the public, he piloted a plane, "14-bis", several hundred feet. At the time, it was held to be the world's first manned flight of an aeroplane but this achievement was later credited to the Wright brothers. It is, however, a highly contentious decision. The Wright brothers made their maiden flight away from public scrutiny and they would not fly in front of the public until 1907. Secondly, their plane was not able to take off under its own power, requiring a catapult contraption to power it into the air. Many claim that Alberto's flight should therefore be seen as the first genuine flight.

It was at a party, celebrating the Deutsch de la Meurthe win, that Alberto and Cartier famously discussed the problem of using a pocket watch whilst airborne. How could you time yourself with a pocket watch if your hands were needed for other things? Cartier went home and designed a watch to be worn around the wrist. It is erroneous to claim that this was the world's first wristwatch, but it is true that Alberto single-handedly popularised use of the wristwatch among men.

Answer: Futures trading

There are many potential financial risks facing the coffee producer and prices can fluctuate considerably. This problem is accentuated by the fact that coffee plants take four to five years to mature. Thus, the grower that makes an investment in new plants when the world price of coffee is high, may find that the price has slumped by the time the plants are fully grown.

One way to mitigate the risk is through state intervention. In the early 1900s and again in the 1920s, the Brazilian government operated what is known as a valorisation scheme. Under this scheme, they guaranteed to buy coffee from local producers at an agreed level, if the export price fell below that level. These stocks of coffee could then be sold at a profit in years when the export price was high. Such a scheme, though, required considerable external funding. During the 1920s alone, Rothschild bank, amongst others, advanced loans of £40,000,000 for this purpose. (Source : http://www.rothschildarchive.org) The final straw for the valorisation scheme came with the Great Depression when the world price of coffee slumped. The government needed to buy up so much coffee that the quantity bought exceeded the capacity for storage with the result that the surplus had to be burned.

Another way to mitigate risk is through a futures contract. By this, a producer promises to sell an agreed amount of coffee, on an agreed future date, at an agreed price. This may turn to be to the benefit of buyer or seller depending on price fluctuations in the interim. It does, however, significantly reduce the element of risk for the producer. One of the first reported examples of a futures contract is found in the life of the Greek philosopher, Thales, as related by Aristotle. Through guesswork or superior knowledge, he predicted that there would be a good harvest for olives in a particular year. He, therefore, persuaded the owners of the local olive presses to grant him exclusive use of their presses at an agreed rate. Although the rate was less than they would charge in a boom year, they were happy to take the money and eliminate the risk of low demand due to a poor harvest. Having cornered the market, Thales was able to rent out the presses at very high prices when the bumper harvest duly arrived. The Coffee Exchange of the city of New York was established in 1882. After various name changes and a merger, it is now part of the New York Cocoa Exchange.

Alberto became friends with Baron Rothschild in unusual circumstances after his airship crash-landed in the garden of the Baron's house. He would meet Roosevelt in 1904 when given a personal invitation to visit the President at the White House.

Answer: The Fair Trade movement

The Fair Trade scheme seeks to minimise the risk to coffee growers through the altruism of the consumer rather than through financial markets. Local growers are guaranteed a fixed "fair" price regardless of any variations in the world price of coffee. The coffee is branded with the Fairtrade logo and is usually sold at a higher price. Although the scheme is gathering momentum in the US and UK, it still represents a small percentage of total world supply.

H. G. Wells immortalised Alberto in one of his short stories. "The Truth About Pyecraft" appears in the 1903 collection, "Twelve Stories and a Dream". Pyecraft, the "fattest clubman in London", tries to lose weight by trying an eastern medicinal recipe. Unfortunately, this only serves to make him excessively light and he floats to the ceiling. The narrator comments:
"There's one thing pretty evident," I said, "that you mustn't do. If you go out of doors you'll go up and up." I waved an arm upward. "They'd have to send Santos-Dumont after you to bring you down again."

Alberto is also mentioned in Wells' "A Modern Utopia" (1905): "They will be just beginning to fly in Utopia. We owe much to M. Santos Dumont; the world is immeasurably more disposed to believe this wonder is coming, and coming nearly, than it was five years ago."

Answer: Drinking coffee could reduce the risk of developing MS.

The study, on mice, was a joint project between Cornell University in the USA, the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and the Finnish University of Turku. Mice that were given the daily equivalent of 6-8 cups of coffee per day, failed to develop experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, the equivalent of MS.

Alberto was diagnosed with MS in 1910. The following year, he moved from Paris to the village of Bénerville on the Normandy coast and then back to Brazil in 1928. He fell into a severe depression brought on by the illness and by the destructive use of aircraft in the First World War and Brazilian Civil War. This led him to take his own life in 1932 at the age of 59.