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study the politics and economics of development and have long specialized in the study of Africa. So when I was asked in 1981 by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to advise them on how best to restructure the bureaucracy in charge of exporting coffee from Uganda, I jumped at the opportunity. Thus began a nearly 15-year sojourn in the world of coffee.

I began this journey in the early 1980s as a consultant in eastern Africa and ended it in the 1990s as a researcher in Latin America. Over the course of the journey, I learned much; but some of the most important lessons will not appear in scholarly publications. These lessons include a deepened understanding of politics, and the sheer excitement of research. Such lessons are too broad to be communicated with precision, but they are too important not to be shared. They are the kinds of lessons that are best communicated by telling how they were learned.

In 1979, rebels backed by Tanzania overthrew Idi Amin, Uganda's notorious dictator, and foreign governments welcomed Uganda back into the community of nations, dispatching teams of advisers to design development projects that they could assist financially. USAID recruited me to lead a team from the United States. Accompanied by Robert Hahn--a gifted economist who was then a graduate student--I spent the fall of 1981 in Uganda, preparing a report on how best to restructure its coffee industry. The World Bank acquired my report to USAID, liked it, and asked me to implement its recommendations. So I returned to Uganda in 1982 for an additional six weeks. And throughout the 1980s, I returned to East Africa to study the impact of the droughts that periodically assaulted the region. On each trip, I would pause in London to share information and findings with the staff of the International Coffee Organization (ICO), an agency that until 1989 regulated world trade in coffee. Each year the Office of the United States Trade Representative dispatched a delegation to the meetings of the ICO. In 1985, I was appointed to the U.S. delegation and returned, this time as a diplomat, to the world of coffee.

By the late 1980s I was at last able to enter this world as a researcher. Long aware that the major economic and political forces shaping the coffee market originated in Latin America, I struggled to learn Spanish and Portuguese and, supported by the National Science Foundation, began research in that region. I burrowed through archives, interviewed officials, and traveled throughout the coffee zones in Colombia and Brazil, the two largest producers of the beverage. I then journeyed to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences to write up my results. Unpacking dusty boxes that bore dates that ranged over decades and addresses that ranged over continents, I pieced together what I had learned.

My book appeared this winter. But when publishing books and articles, scholars too often leave valuable material on the cutting-room floor. I take this opportunity to share these outtakes. These lessons run deep; they shape who I am and affect my attitude toward my field, my research, my students. They are the kinds of lessons that students should learn, but which we academics rarely impart.

My initial work in Uganda proved highly successful. Robert Hahn furnished the kind of applied economics that has come to distinguish his professional work, while I addressed several difficult aspects of the proposed reforms. We established effective working relationships with our Ugandan colleagues. Our report was well received by the Ugandan government and donor community. Our mission was a success. Yet I left Uganda feeling deep-ly troubled, for while residing there, I had been living in fear.

Of necessity, I had quickly acquired the practical knowledge long ago mastered by my Ugandan counterparts. I had assimilated information about which checkpoints were staffed by Tanzanian soldiers, which by the Ugandan army, and which by the Ugandan police. The first were the safest, for the Tanzanians were professional soldiers and well disciplined. The last were to be avoided, for the police often began drinking early and, lacking a fixed schedule of bribes, often quarreled with those from whom they extorted payment. I had also learned which roads to avoid entirely, because traffic was likely to be machine-gunned by rebel forces. I had begun each day in Uganda by designing a plan of work based on the necessity of being off the road before dark, to lower the risk of being shot.

When I returned to Uganda the following spring under the auspices of the World Bank, I renewed acquaintances with my Ugandan colleagues. For them, Uganda's return to the international community had meant renewed chances to practice their professions, as administrators, economists, or engineers. But rather than feeling exhilarated, most, I learned, were haunted by the reality that the renewed opportunities made manifest. Given the circumstances of their lives, why train? Why invest in new skills? Too often they had come to the office to find a colleague missing, or attended the funeral of a friend. On long car trips during the day, or while sharing drinks at night, they helped me to understand what it is to live in a world overrun by soldiers.

As we got to know each other, our discussion moved from professional topics to families, friends, and loved ones. I learned of the central questions many confronted in their lives: How do you teach a child to work hard, go to school, or be honest, when he may not grow up? Why shouldn't a child be allowed to do whatever she wants? Why should anyone do without today, when there might not be a tomorrow? And I discovered that my colleagues loved their courses abroad not merely for the intellectual nourishment but also because in Stockholm or Oslo or London they need not sleep with one ear cocked for the sound of an approaching lorry full of soldiers. At this point the conversation would stop as someone imitated the distinctive sound of a certain type of vehicle, imported by the army, in deals brokered by merchants, in exchange for exports of coffee.

Coffee Plantation, by Candido Portiniari (1935). MUSEU NACIONAL DE BELAS ARTES, RIO DE JANEIRO/BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY, LONDON

I had come from abroad and would leave. For my Ugandan counterparts, there could be no escape. If young, they reminded me of my students, or, if older, of myself.

I later worked in Colombia, another violent country. Early in this century, thousands of Colombians died in the War of 1,000 Days; in the period of la violencia following World War II, so did more than a quarter of a million more. Conflict in Colombia centers in the rural areas, where guerrilla groups occupy armed enclaves, families fight over land rights, and political parties struggle for local domination. And yet, in the coffee zones, communities of small-scale farmers have carved out islands of peace. By organizing their communities, they have rid them of bandits. Families receive health care, children attend school, and villages celebrate weddings, saints' days, and festivals without fear of violence.

Inspired by my Ugandan experiences, I sought to comprehend the origins of this peace, for it was peace, not violence, that now appeared problematic. I made only modest progress in explaining the peace, but I did gain a keen sense of its significance. I encountered active scholars teaching in provincial universities, located in the small cities that dot the coffee zone. I witnessed the craft and care that went into the fabrication of houses on Colombia's coffee farms. On work days, I joined lunch-time audiences at concerts held in courtyards in the provincial towns. On weekends, I attended village festivals. In a society permeated by violence, I had learned, the night is feared; I was now reminded that in a society at peace, the night can be savored. The contrast was made vivid outside Manizales, in the center of Colombia's coffee zone. As the sun descended, shadows rushed from the valley bottom and ascended the mountain sides--and a carpet of lights soon followed. The peasants had organized not only rural peace but also rural services, including electric power. Instead of huddling in the shadows, they gathered in the light of their homes to talk, to listen to the radio, to watch television, or to prepare the next day's lessons.

I had left the classroom and entered the world of coffee. Upon returning to the academy, I strove to find ways to comprehend what I had seen. Listening, some of my students responded; despairing of my obtuseness, they began to teach me about life in the inner cities of my own country. Others--colleagues in the faculty, by and large--guided me to the literature on early modern Europe, when societies that are now rich and peaceful slaughtered a third or more of their populations. Still others reintroduced me to the work of Thomas Hobbes. When I reencountered the famous passage, "and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," I experienced a shock of recognition: the lines that precede it outlined the terms of reference for my mission in Uganda. We were to review trade, refurbish the university, revitalize farming, and so on down Hobbes's list. But, as Hobbes argued and my experience confirmed, such elements of a decent life require that a basic political premise first be fulfilled: an end to the fear of violent death. That is the basic contribution of politics. Venturing into the world of coffee, I had discovered the foundations of my field.

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