Gabriel de Clieu

Gabriel-Mathieu Francois D'ceus de Clieu (c. 1687 – 29 November 1774) was a French naval officer and the governor of Guadeloupe from 1737 to 1752[1] and the founder of Pointe-à-Pitre.

De Clieu is celebrated for his claim to have introduced coffee to the French colonies of the Western Hemisphere in the 1720s and his support for its cultivation.

[4]While Di Clieu was not the first to transport coffee plants to the Caribbean islands, he is largely credited due to close timing and his dramatic journal accounts.

[6][7] However, a recent history points out that though it may well be true that de Clieu brought a seedling to Martinique, and perhaps even that he shared his water ration with it, coffee was already growing in the Western Hemisphere: in the French colony of Saint-Domingue since 1715 and in the Dutch colony of Surinam since 1718.

His descendants in Dieppe plan to open a museum to commemorate the legend of De Clieu.