Audio Series: Jonathan Morris

Anna speaks with Dr Jonathan Morris about the connection coffee has with sugar. Not only is sugar something that has accompanied coffee in Europe for almost as long as it has been drunk, but it also shares a dark colonial history.

Coffee was grown in the Caribbean alongside sugar plantations, taking up the higher grounds, where sugarcane was grown on the lower levels of the islands. There was a division of ownership and power, but coffee still operated within the violent plantation structures.

Dr Morris specialises in the history of coffee, but also looks at the cultural context of the drink across the world. This episode explores these topics and also ask questions about the future of the bean.

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Jonathan Morris is Director, Research Culture and Environment at the University of Hertfordshire, where he is also Research Professor in Modern History.     

Jonathan trained as an historian of modern Italy, specialising in the history of consumption, and is now recognised as one of the world’s leading coffee historians. His is the author of the acclaimed Coffee: A Global History and co-creator of the A History of Coffee Podcast series. He previously co-edited and authored Coffee: A Comprehensive Guide to the Bean, the Beverage, and the Industry, and directed the Cappuccino Conquests research project.

Images of Jonathan sorting coffee in Burundi, a women worker on a coffee farm in Uganda, a Faema E61 coffee machine (historic image from 1961), a coffee farm in Costa Rica, coffee cupping with a producer in Costa Rica.