Indonesian Coffee History (Wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_coffee


"In the early days, the prominent coffee under Dutch rule was Coffea arabica. The coffee was introduced to the archipelago via Ceylon (modern day Sri Lanka). The Dutch Colonial Government initially planted coffee around Batavia (Jakarta), and as far south as Sukabumi and Bogor, in the 17th century. Coffee plantations were also established in East Java, Central Java, West Java and in parts of Sumatra and Sulawesi. Coffee at the time was also grown in East Indonesia- East Timor and Flores. Both of these islands were originally under Portuguese control and the coffee was also C. arabica, but from different root stocks. The coffee in Eastern Indonesia was not affected to the same degree by rust, and even today, some coffee in East Timor can be traced back to the 16th and 17th century.

A rust plague in the late 1880s killed off much of the plantation stocks in Sukabumi, before spreading to Central Java and parts of East Java. Around the turn of the century the C. arabica crops were devastated by coffee rust, wiping out the bulk of the Dutch root-stocks. The Dutch responded by replacing the C. arabica firstly with Coffea liberica (a tough, but somewhat unpalatable coffee) and later with Coffea canephora. The popularity of this species was short lived as it was also affected by disease. The C. liberica cherry can still be found throughout Java, but is seldom used as a commercial crop in Indonesia. The C. liberica bean is much larger than either C. arabica or the C. canephora cherry; however, it shares more in common cupping wise with C. canephora."