Uneven Grounds
Quality and Place in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Ceylon's Coffee Culture
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8156413 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Raymond M Hyser (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 99 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 614-637 |
| Publication date | 2025-11-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Agricultural History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-1482 • E-ISSN: 1533-8290 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00021482-11923137 |
| OpenAlex | W7114926354 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 15 |
This article examines agricultural knowledge and European perceptions of the tropics by tracing the codevelopment of native and plantation coffee in British Ceylon. European coffee planters and merchants used these two classifications to differentiate between coffee produced by Ceylonese cultivators and that by European planters. It argues that these descriptors were place-based categories meant to indicate the coffee's origin, thereby signaling quality to potential buyers. The categories “native” and “plantation” reflected the specificity and variety of Ceylon's coffee-growing regions, as well as the cultivation techniques used in different areas. A thorough examination and comparison of the places where native and plantation coffee were produced reveals how European planters engaged with and perceived tropical landscapes through the implementation of Caribbean plantation agriculture in Ceylon's central highlands. Grounding the study of Ceylon's coffee culture in place reveals the intimate connection between European perceptions of quality and specific landscapes
Agriculture · Colonialism · Perception · Quality (philosophy · Variety (cybernetics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies
| Highly cited | No |
|---|