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A BRIEF HISTORY OF COFFEE:
The story of how coffee growing and drinking spread around the world is one
of the greatest and most romantic in history. It starts in the Horn of
Africa, in Ethiopia,
where the coffee tree probably originated in the province of Kaffa.
There are various fanciful but unlikely stories surrounding the discovery
of the properties of roasted coffee beans. One story has it that an
Ethiopian goatherd was amazed at the lively behaviour of his goats after
chewing red coffee berries. What we know with more certainty is that the
succulent outer cherry flesh was eaten by slaves taken from present day
Sudan into Yemen and Arabia, through the great port of its day, Mocha, now
synonymous with coffee. Coffee was certainly being cultivated in Yemen by
the 15th century and probably much earlier than that. Mocha was also the
main port for the one sea route to Mecca,
and was the busiest place in the world at the time. But the Arabs had a
strict policy not to export any fertile beans, so that coffee could not be
cultivated anywhere else. The coffee bean is the seed of the coffee tree,
but when stripped of its outer layers it becomes infertile. The race to
make off with some live coffee trees or beans was eventually won by the
Dutch in 1616, who brought some back to Holland where they were grown in
greenhouses. Initially, the authorities in Yemen actively encouraged
coffee drinking as it was considered preferable to the extreme side effects
of Kat, a shrub whose buds and leaves were chewed as a stimulant. The first
coffeehouses were opened in Mecca
and were called 'kaveh kanes'. They quickly spread throughout the Arab
world and became successful places where chess was played, gossip was
exchanged, and singing, dancing and music were enjoyed. They were luxuriously
decorated and each had an individual character. Nothing quite like the
coffeehouse had existed before: a place where society and business could be
conducted in comfortable surroundings and where anyone could go, for the
price of coffee. The Arabian coffeehouses soon became centres of political
activity and were suppressed. Coffee and coffeehouses were subsequently
banned several times over the next few decades, but they kept reappearing.
Eventually a solution was found when coffeehouses and coffee were taxed.
COFFEE COMES TO ASIA
The Dutch were
also growing coffee at Malabar in India,
and in 1699 took some to Batavia in Java, in
what is now Indonesia.
Within a few years the Dutch colonies had become the main suppliers of
coffee to Europe. Today Indonesia
is the fourth largest exporter of coffee in the world.
COFFEE COMES
TO EUROPE
Venetian traders first brought coffee to Europe
in 1615. This was a period when the two other great hot beverages also
appeared in Europe. Hot chocolate was the
first, brought by the Spanish from the Americas
to Spain in 1528; and
tea, which was first sold in Europe in
1610. At first coffee was mainly sold by lemonade vendors and was believed
to have medicinal qualities. The first European coffeehouse opened in Venice in 1683, with
the most famous, Caffe Florian in Piazza San Marco, opening in 1720. It is
still open for business today. The largest insurance market in the world,
Lloyd's of London, began life as a coffeehouse. It was started in 1688 by
Edward Lloyd, who prepared lists of the ships that his customers had
insured.
COFFEE COMES
TO THE AMERICAS
The first reference to coffee being drunk in North America is from 1668
and, soon after, coffee houses were established in New
York, Philadelphia, Boston and other
towns. The Boston Tea Party Of 1773 was planned in a coffee house, the
Green Dragon. Both the New York Stock Exchange and the Bank of New York
started in coffeehouses, in what is today the financial district known as
Wall Street. It was in the 1720s that coffee first came to be cultivated in
the Americas,
through what is perhaps the most fascinating and romantic story in the
history of coffee. Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu was a French naval officer
serving in Martinique who in 1720, went to Paris on leave. With assistance and no
little personal charm he acquired a coffee tree which he took with him on
the ship back. The plant was kept in a glass case on deck to keep it warm
and prevent damage from salt water. The journey was eventful, or at least
Mr. Mathieu de Clieu's journal of the voyage was. Pirates from Tunis threatened the
ship, there was a violent storm and the plant had to be tied down. Our hero
faced an enemy on board who was jealous and tried to sabotage the plant.
There was a violent struggle in which a branch was torn off, but the plant
survived this horror. Then the ship was becalmed and drinking water was
rationed. De Clieu had his priorities right and gave most of his allowance
of precious water to the coffee plant. It survived, as did he. Finally, the
ship arrived in Martinique and the coffee
tree was re-planted at Preebear, where it was surrounded by a thorn hedge
and watched over by slaves. It grew, and multiplied, and by 1726 the first
harvest was ready. It is recorded that by 1777, there were between 18 and
19 million coffee trees on Martinique, and the model for a new cash crop that
could be grown in the New World was in
place. But it was the Dutch who first started the spread of the coffee
plant in Central and South America, where
today it reigns supreme as the main continental cash crop. Coffee first
arrived in the Dutch colony of Surinam
in 1718, to be followed by plantations in French Guyana and the first of
many in Brazil at Para. In 1730 the British introduced coffee to Jamaica, where today the most famous and
expensive coffee in the world is grown in the Blue
Mountains. By 1825, South and Central
America were on track towards their coffee destiny. That date
is also important as it was when coffee was first planted in Hawaii which produces the only US coffee,
and one of the finest.
COFFEE TODAY
For North
Americans, the world's largest consumers, Seattle is the new spiritual home of
coffee. The wettest major city in the USA
gave birth in the 1970s to a café or 'Latte' culture which swept the USA and has
dramatically improved the general quality of the coffee Americans drink.
Today, any public place in the USA will have one or more
coffee carts, serving a variety of coffees, drinks and snacks. This new
found 'coffee culture' has started to spread to the rest of the world. To
those countries with great coffee traditions of their own, such as Italy, Germany,
and Scandinavia, added new converts to the
pleasures of good coffee. Today it is possible to find good coffee in every
major city of the world, from London to Sydney to Tokyo;
tomorrow the world will drink more and more importantly, better coffee.
COFFEE IS A
GLOBAL COMMODITY
The importance of coffee in the world economy cannot be overstated. It is
one of the most valuable primary products in world trade, in many years
second in value only to oil as a source of foreign exchange to developing
countries. Its cultivation, processing, trading, transportation and
marketing provide employment for millions of people worldwide. Coffee is
crucial to the economies and politics of many developing countries; for
many of the world's Least Developed Countries, exports of coffee account
for a substantial part of their foreign exchange earnings in some cases
over 80%. Coffee is a traded commodity on major futures and commodity
exchanges, most importantly in London and New York.
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