The Working Group Colonial Continuities Oldenburg invites you to a reading on 23 October at 6 pm on the topic of ‘Coffee. A story of pleasure and violence’. The reading followed by a discussion will take place at Cine k in Oldenburg. The book with the same title was published by Rotpunktverlag in 2023. One of the three authors, Toni Keppeler, will present it in Oldenburg.

Average Central Europeans drink two or three cups of coffee a day, Northern Europeans even more. Hardly anyone thinks about the labour, poverty and environmental destruction involved. Coffee was a colonial commodity in Europe from the very beginning and still is to this day. This book explains the various methods of growing and processing coffee, with all the associated risks to the environment. It shows how the production of the beans has contributed to climate change and why it is now threatened by it. It tells the story of the spread of coffee from its beginnings as wild forest coffee in Ethiopia, its journey across the Arab world to Asia and across the sea to Latin America, by far the most important coffee-growing region today. This history has also always been a history of clear-cutting rainforests, forced labour and slavery. On many plantations, what is said in Latin America still applies today: coffee is grown on poverty. This does not have to be the case. The book also shows that it is possible to produce environmentally and socially responsible coffee.

Coffee - reading and discussion on 23 October 2024 at 6 pm at Cine k, Bahnhofstr. 11, 26122 Oldenburg