Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States

by Michelle Craig McDonald

Illuminates how coffee tied the economic future of the early United States to the wider Atlantic world

Coffee is among the most common goods traded and consumed worldwide, and so omnipresent its popularity is often taken for granted. But even everyday habits have a history. When and why coffee become part of North American daily life is at the center of Coffee Nation. Using a wide range of archival, quantitative, and material evidence, Michelle Craig McDonald follows coffee from the slavery-based plantations of the Caribbean and South America, through the balance sheets of Atlantic world merchants, into the coffeehouses, stores, and homes of colonial North Americans, and ultimately to the growing import/export businesses of the early nineteenth-century United States that rebranded this exotic good as an American staple. The result is a sweeping history that explores how coffee shaped the lives of enslaved laborers and farmers, merchants and retailers, consumers and advertisers.

Coffee Nation also challenges traditional interpretations of the American Revolution, as coffee’s spectacular profitability in US markets and popularity on the new nation’s tables by the mid-nineteenth century was the antithesis of independence. From its beginnings as a colonial commodity in the early eighteenth century, coffee’s popularity soared to become a leading global economy by the 1830s. The United States dominated this growth, by importing ever-increasing amounts of the commodity for drinkers at home and developing a lucrative re-export trade to buyers overseas. But while income generated from coffee sales made up an expanding portion of US trade revenue, the market always depended on reliable access to a commodity that the nation could not grow for itself. By any measure, the coffee industry was a financial success story, but one that runs counter to the dominant narrative of national autonomy. Distribution, not production, lay at the heart of North America’s coffee business, and its profitability and expansion relied on securing and maintaining ties first with the Caribbean and then Latin America.

Genres: Nonfiction

280 pages, Hardcover

First published May 27, 2025

Reviews

[Shreedevi Gurumurty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sir Nicholas Lawes, at his Temple Hall estate, experimented with a variety of crops and introduced the very lucrative coffee growing into the island in the 1720s.

The first mention of coffee in the US dates back to 1668. It was brought to New Amsterdam (now New York) either by the Dutch or by the British.

During the American Revolution, drinking tea was deemed unpatriotic, as it was the favoured drink of the British. So, coffee became the national drink. Back then, most US coffeehouses were also located in New England, and many of them had a clear political affiliation. Where the coffeehouse was situated or what it was named determined much of its patronage. For example, the British Coffee House in Boston was frequented by Redcoats (British soldiers) and other loyalists, while the Green Dragon, also in Boston, was a meeting place for the many dissenters against British rule.

Even after the US became independent, it still relied on its Atlantic neighbours and their coffee exporters. The USA sought to monopolise coffee as part of its imperialistic and cultural hegemonic efforts, overshadowing its foreign origins.

The Arbuckle brothers entered into a coffee roasting business together in Pittsburgh.In 1868, Arbuckle patented a formula for an egg-based glaze that coated coffee beans, protecting them from the air. In 1871, the brothers moved their business to New York City and formed the Arbuckle Brothers Company. They were the first merchants to sell packaged coffee.

"Depending on the time and place, coffee has been characterised as exotic, profitable, common, genteel, foreign, or patriotic. The coffee industry has been bound up with colonialism, enslavement, revolution, and nationalism, and has involved stakeholders such as entrepreneurial traders and planters, enslaved and coerced workers, ship captains and sailors, wholesale and retail merchants, storekeepers and vendue masters, marketers and advertisers, and a range of purveyors and consumers that run the whole social gamut. Those involved in its trade went to great lengths to ensure access to regional producers, and to retain and defend these connections through diplomacy and even war."

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this great, informative microhistory in one sitting.
I learned far more than I expected to learn and love that I have more information to add to my understanding of American history even after studying the subject for years.
McDonald offers readers a well-written, well-researched book that provides new insights into the American Revolution, the global economic interconnectedness of the time, and a clear and easy to follow path of how coffee has influenced American history and culture.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the dARC of this work in exchange for my honest review.

[Andrea Wenger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book traces the history of coffee in North America—from its first cultivation in the Caribbean and South America, to its rise as a dominant commodity in the US economy. The book is informative, engaging, and easy to read.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.