[War & Business] Americano and the American War of Independence

[Image source=Asia Economy DB]

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunwoo Lee] In South Korea, the term 'Americano' is synonymous with coffee. More than 150 million cups of Americano have been sold at Starbucks Korea alone. However, the word 'Americano' originally carried a derogatory meaning. In the 18th century, Italian travelers saw Americans brewing cheap Southeast Asian coffee beans like barley tea and drinking it, and they named it 'Americano' to express contempt, implying that Americans were drinking something barely worthy of being called coffee.

But Americans were not drinking Americano because they didn’t know good coffee. In the 18th century, when America was a British colony, the British mercantilist policies prevented the import of flavorful coffee from Latin America. Americans had to smuggle and drink some spoiled Indonesian coffee that had absorbed seawater during the months-long Pacific crossing. Spain, which controlled the so-called 'Coffee Belt' countries in Latin America where large-scale coffee plantations operated, had been a bitter enemy of Britain for centuries, which further tightened coffee import controls. The British government strictly prohibited coffee imports not only in Britain but also in its American colonies under the pretext of not increasing imports from enemy countries.

However, the mercantilist coffee import ban was not purely ideological. Behind the policy was the powerful East India Company, which exerted enormous influence over British politics at the time. The East India Company traded with Qing China and sold black tea worldwide. To block the influx of coffee, the biggest competitor to black tea, the company lobbied the British political establishment extensively. In fact, after Britain’s victory over France in 1763, when Britain tried to occupy France’s Latin American coffee-producing colonies, the East India Company poured huge funds into Parliament to pass a policy that instead allowed Britain to occupy French Canada.

As a result, although coffee was produced in large quantities in nearby Caribbean countries, Americans could not obtain it and had no choice but to buy Indonesian coffee from Dutch smugglers. Even then, the British sent troops to seize all smuggled coffee and banned Americans from drinking even that bitter Americano. Britain’s suppression of Americano contributed to the historic 'Boston Tea Party' and the American War of Independence. If Britain had not cracked down on Americano and had turned a blind eye, world history might have been very different.