A history of Coffee
‘Ah how sweet coffee tastes ! lovelier than a thousand kisses , sweeter far than muskatel wine ! I must have coffee…’ Johann Sebastian Bach ,1732
Coffee Cantata.
Revolutions,fortunes and philosophies have all been discussed over endless cups of coffee in the dark smoky rooms of a coffeehouse.Coffee is an integral part of the lives of millions of people around the globe:a source of income, wellcome break from work, a start to the day.Mochas,lattes,cappuccinos and espressos confront us on every street corner,yet few of us realise the distance the coffee bean has travelled,over the centuries, to reach our cups……
so exacly where did this heavenly bean originate, and when did it begin to weave its way into our lives?popualar legend tells us that the coffee beans were discovered as early as the 6th century in southern Ethiopia.One afternoon, a young shephered noticed his goats bahaving strangly after eating the berries from a wild bush; old and young goats alike were jumping crazily about the mountain side. The shephered decided to try the mistirious berries, and found that he had renewed anergy after eating them. He told his friends and soon,the shephereds were spending their evenings by the fire, sucking on the thin nectar that sarounds the bean,then eating it. News of the berries’ invigorating qualities spread to nearby Orthodox monastries, and monks began collecting the berries, crushing them into a pulp and mixing them with hot water in order to make the world’s first cup of coffee.This crude drink helped the monks stay awake during their evening prayers. and its popularity spread throughout the country. soon,coffee beans were used for a variety of purposes.They were given to the ill to restore their energy, sweet pulps around the bean was crushed fermented and used to make wine, the berries were crushed and mixed with animal fat to take on long journeys as a source of enregy.
Arabian wine and whirling dervishes The ethiopians enjoyed the therapeutic effects of coffee for centuries before the bean traveled with arab merchants to Yemen. some time, prior to the 10th century.Here, coffee did not make an impact until the late 14th century when,quite suddenly,coffee was being cultivated in southern Yemen, and the bean was being roasted,crushed into a powder and mixed with hot water to make an invigorating drink;the predecesor of today’s coffee. So what led to this sudden rise to the popluarity of an otherwies obscure berry?Like the Othordox monks in Ethiopia,islamic holy men found that cofee helped them stay awake and alert for prayers.In particular,the wirling devishes,a Sufi sect of islam that devote most of their time to intense prayer and dancing to reach a higher spiritual state,found that cofee helped them to say alert and awake for prolonged prayers, dances and rituals.The devishes are credited with introduing coffee to the cities of Medina and Mecca, the point from which cofee dispersed to the rest of the islamic world. In particular,Mecca became the springboard for the quick movement of coffee.Every year,pilgrims from all over the islamic world converged on mecca-as they continue to do so today -for the anual pilgrimage of Hajj.
In Mecca Pilgrims were introduced to the new drink of islam, and when they returned home,coffee returned with them. ‘Qahwa’ an ancient arabic term for wine,was the new craze of the islamic world,and wherever islam went,coffee followed. By the 16th century, coffee houses had sprung up in all the major cities of the east:Cairo,Baghdad,Damascus,Medina and Istanbul. Whereas coffee had not been a concern for the authorities,the cofee house was another matter.Suddenly there was a place for people to meet and discuss religion, phylosophy and ,most disturbing of all,politcs.In the 15th and the 16th century the Ottoman empire made numerous attempts to ban cofee and cofee houses,but none was successful. The punishment for drinking cofee was at the whim of the ruler,ranging from a dunk in the Bosphorous river in a leather satchel to , at one point,execution. However,any attempts to ban the drink met fiarce oposition and it was apparent that coffee and the cofeehouses were not going go away. By the 16th century, cofee had become an itegral part of the islamic life;Ottoman law even allowed a woman to sue her husband for a divorce if he did not provide with her daily quota of coffee. In two hundred years the cofee bean had moved from relative obscurity to take its place as a promonent part of the islamic society. Men met in the crowded coffeehouses to discuss politics and religion,cofee was always offered to guests in the home and pilgrim, merchants and soldiers carried a personal supply of beans with them on their travels,thereby spreading the drink to every corner of the islamic world. In Europe,merchants brought home the stories of the riches of the east:the lavish palaces of the Sultan ,harems,eunuchs,silks,spices and a mistirious,dark drink ,’black as soot,that the europeans knew only as the arabian wine.
Cofee gets into Europe
the future London stock exchange. Like their eastern conterparts,Eurpean leaders found the sudden popularity of the coffee houses alarming.King Charles11 banned the coffee houses in Britain but public outcry was so great he withdrew the ban after only 11 days.In Germany, the proclamation was made;..”our subjects and soundry …shall upon pain of payment of a fine of five golden florins and the cnfistication of their crockery,refrain from the injurious habit of drinking cofee. Likewise,Prussia’s King Fredrick the great called coffee ‘disgusting’baned it and employed ‘snifers’ to walk the streets and find any ilicit roasting on behind any closed doors. However, as in Britain,the public outcry was so great he was forced to rescind his mind and reverse the ban. but he encouraged his subjects to consider drinking beer instead.
Drink to the revolution!
Accross the Atlantic, in the American colonies,coffee received its greatest boost in 1773 when the british raised the tea tax and the colonists,in defiance of the tax,dumped all the tea into Boston habour during the famous ‘Boston tea party’.Cofee was declared the national drink and the Americans ,the greatest consumers of coffee today,considered it their patriotic and revolutionary duty to drink cofee instead of tea.In Boston, the green dragon coffee house was a popular haunt for revolutionaries, and here, over endless cups of coffee, the American revolution was planned. By the late 17th century ,coffee was a booming business in Europe, the colonies and the east.Demand was great,but supply was limited to the beans produced in Yemen.The yemenis guarded their monopoly closely -all beans were dried or boiled before being allowed to leave.-yet in the crowded marketplaces of Arabia,spies and smugglers risked execution to get their hands on a few fertile beans.Eventually,something had to slip.
One plant powers an industry
By 1690, the Dutch had managed to smuggle fertile coffee beans out of the Arabian port of Mocha and plant them in their colonies in Java and celyon.Thus the Dutch became the first European Nation to produce coffee. Less than twenty years later,the french managed to secure a single coffee bush and plant it in the royal Botanical gardens in paris. Some sources say the bush was a gift from the mayor of Amsterdam to king Luis XIV.-others say it was stolen-but either way,the French were now in the coffee business.This single coffee bush was to become the source of 90% of all the coffee in the world today. In 1723,French army officer,Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu boarded a boat for the french colony of Martinique with a precious cargo in his care;a small coffee bush grown from a cutting of a plant in the Luis XIV garden .The arduous journey was perilous for both de Clieu and his ‘charge’,as he called the plant.Over the course of the journey, a passenger attempted to steal the plant,breaking one of its branches in the insuing strugle;pirates attacked the boat ; and a violent storm threw the ship off the course and water was rationed-de Clieu shared his water ration with the plant to keep it alive.Eventually, the ship landed at Martinique and de Clieu planted the coffee bush in his garden with an armed guard to protect it.Cuttings from the bush were used to plant more trees, and by 1777,official Island records noted the existense of over 18 million coffee trees in the Island. The Dutch and the French guarded their trade as closely as the Yemeni before them, but the portuguese receieved their oportunity to enter the coffee business when they were asked to mediate a border dispute between the French and the Dutch in Guyana.During this time , a mediator, leutenant colonel de Melo palhetto initiated an affair with the governor’s wife.At the collonel’s farewell, the governor’s wife presented him with a bouquet of flowers to thank him for his help with the dispute;inside she had hidden an asortment of cuttings and fertile coffee beans.These beans -also decendants of de Clieu’s first plant went to the Portuguese colony of Brazil to found the largest coffee industry in the world.Today Brazil-with the worlds 30% of the world’s supply-is the largest producer in the world.And it all started with one fragile bush making the ardous journey from europe to Martinique.
Coffee Today
By the turn of the 20th century coffee was availabe to all who wanted it.Coffee which grows best within 1000 miles of the equator ,was a popuar crop for the equatorial colonies and in 1901,the British introduced it as a cash crop to Kenya and Tanzania.After having circumnavigated the globe,the coffee beans were back home in Africa, this time as a comercial crop.Most equatorial countries now produce Coffee.Ethiopia remains the greatest producer and consumer,while Kenya,with strict quality control,produces some of the finest and most sought after cofee beans in the world. Today, 1.500 years after the Ethiopian shephered’s first taste of the bean,coffee is an integral part of many cultures across the globe.Over the centuries,we have transformed the coffee beans to meet our ever Changing needs-Lattes,espresso,decaf and instant-but the attraction remains as compeling as it was in the 16th century.
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