America loves coffee. The dark, bitter beverage is consumed by over 100 million people a day, making it the second most popular drink in America next to water. The US imports roughly $4 billion worth of coffee a year from mostly South American nations such as Brazil, Columbia, Guatemala and Mexico. Even though most of our coffee comes from these areas, coffee plants are not indigenous to them. In fact, the coffee industry on this side of the globe can be traced back to one man, a French soldier turned coffee thief, named Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu.
It all started in 1713 when the mayor of Amsterdam gave King Louis XIV a small coffee plant to put on display in his royal gardens. The plant was a huge deal back in the 1700s because the Dutch were the only Europeans to successfully grow coffee in their Indonesian colonies—most of France had never laid eyes on a coffee plant until that moment.
Louis bragged heavily about his rare new gift to anyone who would listen—which was everyone because he was the king. Although Louis XIV died in 1715, by 1723, word of the royal botanical gift, now a full blown coffee tree, eventually reached Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu who was on leave awaiting his return voyage to Martinique in the West Indies.
De Clieu, realizing the value of the plant, asked King Louis XV, Louis XIV’s successor, if he could have a clipping to take back with him to Martinique. The king declined. So de Clieu, undeterred by the King’s refusal, decided he would have to take matters into his own hands by stealing a piece of the plant. De Clieu waited until his time on leave was set to expire, and, on the night his ship was due to set sail, he scaled the walls of the royal gardens, cut off a small piece of the royal coffee plant and made a mad dash for his ship, docked nearby. Once on board, de Clieu protected the plant from the harsh sea water by keeping it below deck, only bringing it outside for a few hours of sun each day.
And then, all hell broke loose. One of de Clieu’s men, in a fit of rage and jealousy, tried to destroy the plant. De Clieu fought off the crew member, but the sprout suffered a few cuts and broken stems. Shortly after, the ship was attacked by pirates, which sparked a 24-hour battle to ward them off. Then, because de Clieu had obviously angered some vengeful coffee god, a storm nearly sank the vessel.
When de Clieu finally reached the coast of Martinique he planted the sprout in a field, which he carefully hid behind indigenous plants. After 20 months of secretly cultivating the small sprout, de Clieu was able to produce a small harvest, which he gave out freely to doctors and intellectuals on the island to gain support for his new crop. De Clieu’s coffee was an immediate success with the locals who started their own coffee crops from de Clieu’s original plant. From there, it spread to bigger countries in South America such as Brazil and Columbia, the same places we import most of our coffee from today. De Clieu’s exploits gave rise to a massive industry of coffee to America.
So the next time you have a morning cup of joe, think of de Clieu. He stole from a king, fought off a knife-wielding madman, escaped pirates and weathered an immense storm to bring caffeinated enlightenment to the New World.
