This embossed green glass bottle was donated to the museum in 2013. It is from the Paterson company of Glasgow, a popular brand of instant coffee essence and dates from the early 20th century. 

The Paterson Company of Glasgow invented the first instant coffee in 1876: Camp Coffee, an essence of coffee beans, chicory and sugar. The origin of Camp Coffee is believed to have come from a request from the Gordon Highlanders to Campbell Paterson for a coffee drink that could be used easily by the army on field campaigns in India. The regular process of grinding and brewing coffee beans was too complicated and time-consuming for a military field kitchen. 

The creation of a liquid Camp Coffee provided a simpler method. R. Paterson & Son merged with Jenks Brothers Foods to become Paterson Jenks in 1974. A decade later McCormick acquired the company The transatlantic trade in Africans played a critical role in shaping the existing coffee industry. In the 1700s coffee began to make its mark on Britain. 

Coffee houses appeared in England in around 1650 and by 1675 there were over 3000 coffee houses in England. Demand for coffee overlapped with the increasing demand for sugar. Tobacco fuelled the slave trade and established the “triangle trade” where the journey from Europe to Africa carried manufactured goods, and the journey from Africa to the Caribbean and America carried enslaved Africans to the growing plantations in the New World. From such locations as Jamaica, coffee was transported back into the U.K. By 1660, this arrangement was formalized when the Royal African Company was founded to trade along the western coast of Africa. Colonizers established vast coffee plantations in Brazil, the Caribbean and parts of Central America, where coffee production became integral to the new economy. Enslaved people on coffee plantations endured brutal conditions. 

The exploitive legacy of coffee is still reflected in the modern treatment of exploited African and Latin American coffee farmers, many of whom are descendants of historically enslaved people.