Coffee in Pre-Partition Bengal: Colonial Ledgers and Lost Trade Routes
Before coffee became a café drink in Bangladesh, it was already moving through Bengal as cargo, curiosity and commercial experiment. Coffee reached Bengal through the Indian Ocean trade, particularly through Mocha in Yemen, one of the great coffee-exporting ports of the period. By the eighteenth century, coffee was entering Calcutta as an imported commodity rather than a Bengal-grown crop. Bengal was connected to the coffee world, even though it was never one of its major producing regions. Then came the experiments. Nineteenth-century records describe coffee growing in gardens around Bengal, including Dacca. But the most intriguing chapter unfolded in Chittagong. In 1786, Sir William Jones described seeing coffee trees among the hills of Chittagong. Whether these were cultivated plants, earlier introductions by traders, or something else remains uncertain. By 1843, however, the experiment had become decidedly commercial. Commissioner Sconce proposed the Chittagong Joint Stock Coffee C...
