During most of the 20th century, Colombia was the world's second largest producer of coffee and the first of soft coffees. Marco Palacios explores in this book ?considered one of the fundamental contributions to Colombian historiography produced in recent decades? the implications that coffee had on society, the economy, and politics from the mid-twentieth century to 1970. Using a broad range of archives ?public and private, national and foreign?, reconstructs and analyzes the evolution of agrarian societies in temperate lands, the hacienda system, mainly in Cundinamarca - Tolima and Antioquia, and the expansion in Gran Caldas that On the assumption of a society of small growers, it would become the largest producer in the country. It also proposes a business history of the commercialization of the grain and its links with the rest of society and the economy, even in remote areas of the country and far from the coffee growing areas. Also, he delves into the study of coffee institutions and outlines the trajectory of the National Federation of Coffee Growers and its most powerful tool since 1940: the National Coffee Fund. It also focuses on the role of international coffee agreements in the modernization of Colombian coffee growing. The development of these themes serves the author to discern the nature of the Colombian state.