Coffee History
Condemned by his enemies to wander and die of starvation in a desert outside the Yemenite port of Mocha, Omar is awakened at midnight by an enormous apparition, the spirit of his dead mentor. He is guided to a coffee tree, where he picks the fruit and roasts the seeds. He then tires to soften them in water, and, when this fails, drinks the liquid. Astounded at his physical and mental feeling of well-being, he introduces the beverage to Mocha where its beneficial effects, attested to by his survival, are considered signs from God.
Though the first discovery of coffee is unknown, many legends have been passed on generation to generation. In another legend, Kaldi, a young goatherd, sees his flock prancing and standing on their hind legs after eating certain cherries. In a state of worry, he decides to try to find the fruit for himself. A passing monk was astonished one day to see the herdsman and flock happily dancing together in the field. After finding out Kaldi’s secret, the monk boiled the fruit and used the new drink to keep awake for nightlong religious ceremonies.
From these legends, coffee took on a mythical status—somewhere between that of the manna of the Old Testament and the heady wine of Bacchus—and began to spread throughout the Arab world. There, coffee was consumed when advised by doctors who believed coffee was so beneficial, and prescribed it to anyone who was willing to drink it. Dervishes introduced the drink at night-long religious ceremonies in Aden, Yemen, Cairo, and Mecca. There, they passed huge jars of coffee around and chanted prayers. Coffee began to spread through professions that worked at night, such as scholars, lawyers, and artists. By this time, coffee became a permanent part of the civilized Eastern world.
Before the first monk and the first patient, coffee was not prepared as a beverage but as a food. African tribes used stone mortars to crush the cherries from wild coffee trees and mixed them with animal fat. This mixture was then made into balls that were consumed at their war parties. The fat, mixed with the raw coffee’s high protein content, provided concentrated nourishment while the caffeine acted as a stimulant to bring the warriors to the “height of savagery.”
Through time, coffee became a beverage in the form of wine. Africans fermented the juice of the ripe cherries mixed with cold water. In some cases, they put the dried coffee pit into the cold mixture and drank the resulting beverage. Arab traders brought coffee back to their homeland and cultivated the plant for the first time on plantations around 1000 A.D. They also began to boil the beans which created a drink they called "qahwa" (literally means “that which prevents sleep”).
Time went on and the preparation of coffee became more sophisticated. Around 1200 A.D., coffee was being prepared by the extraction of flavors from the dry hulls of the bean. Around this time, someone got the idea of roasting the beans over a charcoal fire. The bean was then placed in boiling water for a half an hour which produced a pale yellow liquid. By the sixteenth century, further advances had been introduced. The bean was roasted on stone trays, and then later on metal plates. These beans, when placed into hot water, created strong liquor. Someone finally ground the beans using a mortar and pestle and mixed it with boiling water. This extracted drink was consumed grounds and all. This became the reigning method of coffee preparation for over 300 years.
In 1453, Coffee was introduced to Constantinople by Ottoman Turks. The world's first coffee shop, Kiva Han, opened there in 1475. Turkish law made it legal for a woman to divorce her husband if he failed to provide her with her daily quota of coffee. Then, in 1511, Khair Beg, the corrupt governor of Mecca, tried to ban coffee for the idea that its influence might foster opposition to his rule. The sultan sent word that coffee is sacred and had the governor executed.
In 1600, Coffee, introduced to the West by Italian traders, grabbed attention in high places. In Italy, The priests believed that coffee was the drink of the Devil. Moslems were forbidden to drink wine because it was a drink sanctified by Christ and used in the Holy Communion, therefore Satan, leader of the “infidels”, must have had invented coffee as a substitute. Christians debated if consumption of this “hellish brew” would risk eternal damnation. Pope Clement VIII decided to put this dispute to rest once and for all. He had coffee brought to him and found it delightful. He knew it would be a sin for this drink to be banned to Christians, so he baptized it on the spot.
In 1607, Captain John Smith helped to found the colony of Virginia at Jamestown. It's believed that he introduced coffee to North America. On the cargo list of the Mayflower was a wooden mortar and pestle used for grinding coffee powder. Though it is likely coffee was around, the first mention of it wasn’t until 1668 when the town of New York was established.
In 1645, the first coffeehouse opened in Italy, and in 1652, the first coffeehouse opened in England. Coffee houses multiplied and become popular forums for learned and not so learned people. These coffeehouses were dubbed "penny universities" (a penny being the price of a cup of coffee). After becoming popular in England, France was introduced to coffee around 1660. This was the result of merchants who had a habit of drinking this beverage. They came to France and found they could not forgo the pleasure of coffee. Through this, they began commercially importing coffee from Egypt. However, coffee did not become popularized in France until 1669 when the Turkish ambassador, Suleiman Aga, began holding outrageous coffee parties for the French nobility. These parties are described by Isaac D’Israeli in his Curiosities of Literature:
“On bended knee, the black slaves of the Ambassador, arrayed in the most
gorgeous Oriental costumes served the choicest Mocha coffee in tiny cups of egg-shell porcelain, hot, strong and fragrant, poured out in saucers of Gold and silver, placed on embroidered silk doylies fringed with gold bullion, to the grand dames, who fluttered their fans with many grimaces, bending their piquant faces—be-rouged, be-powdered and be-patched—over the new and steaming beverage.”
In 1668, Coffee replaced beer as New York's City's favorite breakfast drink. Though the American coffee houses never influenced the arts, they contained assembly rooms where court trials took place. Also, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse opened in England and was visited by merchants and maritime insurance agents. Eventually it becomes Lloyd's of London, the best-known insurance company in the world. In 1672, the first coffeehouse opened in Paris.
The Turkish Army surrounded Vienna in 1675. Franz George Kolschitzky, a Viennese who had lived in Turkey, slipped through the enemy lines to lead relief forces to the city. The fleeing Turks left behind sacks of green coffee. When dividing the spoils, none of the soldiers wanted the coffee, so Kolschitzky took them all for himself. With the unwanted beans, he opened the first coffee house in Vienna called “The Blue Bottle.” He also established the habit of refining the brew by filtering out the grounds, sweetening it, and adding a dash of milk.
Around this time, the world entered the “Golden Age of Coffee.” This was a time to celebrate coffee and the wisdom that came with it. In London, for a penny, a man could enter one of these smoke filled rooms and converse with learned men and enjoy a variety of music. At one of these “penny universities,” Diderot came to work on his encyclopedia. This era gave way to a new climate of “dazzling lucidity.” This “Golden Age” was the true essence of coffee at its finest.
With a coffee plant smuggled out of the Arab port of Mocha, the Dutch became the first to transport and cultivate coffee commercially in Ceylon and in their East Indian colony Java, the source of the brew's nickname. As a result, in 1713, the Dutch unwittingly provided Louis XIV of France with a coffee bush in which produced the entire Western coffee industry. Then, in 1723, the French naval officer, Gabriel Mathieu do Clieu, stole a seedling and transported it to Martinique for the main reason of the growing popularity of coffee. Within 50 years an official survey recorded 19 million coffee trees on Martinique. Ninety percent of the world's coffee spread from this one plant.
The Brazilian coffee industry got its start in 1727 when Lieutenant Colonel Francisco de Melo Palheta was sent by the government to arbitrate a border dispute between the French and the Dutch colonies in Guiana. Not only did he settle the dispute, but also had an affair with the wife of French Guiana's governor. Although France guarded its New World coffee plantations to prevent cultivation from spreading, the lady said good-bye to Palheta with a bouquet in which she hid cuttings and fertile seeds of coffee.
Johann Sebastian Bach composed his Kaffee-Kantate in 1732. This was partly an ode to coffee and partly a stab at the movement in Germany to prevent women from drinking coffee (it was thought to make them sterile). The cantata includes the aria, "Ah! How sweet coffee taste! Lovelier than a thousand kisses, sweeter far than muscatel wine! I must have my coffee." Overall, it was poking fun at the physicians’ campaign of false propaganda.
The Boston Tea Party made America a coffee drinking nation practically overnight. Two centuries later, tea was still not accepted as was before. To give the Americans something to drink, French and Dutch colonists supplied them with coffee. As time went on, merchants returned with coffee from Martinique, Puerto Rico, and Haiti. After the eighteenth century, coffee moved westward to the frontiers of America.
Prussia's Frederick the Great tried to block imports of green coffee as Prussia's wealth was drained. Frederick told people to give up coffee and return to beer, the drink of their fathers. Public outcry changed his mind.
Coffee’s popularity continued to grow. In this time, people were experimenting with blending different types of coffee. In 1886, the former wholesale grocer, Joel Cheek, named his popular coffee blend "Maxwell House," after the hotel in Nashville, TN where it was served.
In Germany during the early 1900’s, afternoon coffee became a standard occasion. The derogatory term "KaffeeKlatsch" was coined to describe women's gossip at these affairs. This term has since broadened to mean relaxed conversation in general.
Hills Bros. began packing roast coffee in vacuum tins in 1900, spelling the end of the many local roasting shops and coffee mills. And in 1901, the first soluble "instant" coffee was invented by Japanese-American chemist, Satori Kato of Chicago.
In 1903, German coffee importer, Ludwig Roselius, turned a batch of ruined coffee beans over to researchers, who perfect the process of removing caffeine from the beans without destroying the flavor. He marketed it under the brand name "Sanka." Sanka was introduced to the United States in 1923 as the first decaffeinated coffee.
George Constant Washington, an English chemist living in Guatemala, noticed a powdery condensation forming on the spout of his silver coffee carafe. After experimentation, he creates the first mass-produced instant coffee in 1906 (his brand is called Red E Coffee). By 1920, prohibition went into effect in the United States and coffee sales boomed. By 1940, the United States imported 70 percent of the world’s coffee crop.
Having been asked by Brazil to help find a solution to their coffee surpluses, Nestle Company invented freeze-dried coffee. Nestle developed Nescafe and introduced it in Switzerland. Then, During W.W.II, American soldiers were issued instant Maxwell House coffee in their ration kits. Back home, widespread hoarding led to coffee rationing. This action led to numerous riots and caused uproar among people for their beloved drink. This uproar caused the federal government to form the Permanent Coffee Defense Institute. The Permanent Coffee Defense Institute helped stabilize the world’s coffee and controlled the coffee plantation’s export numbers. Overall, this caused the price of coffee to stabilize.
Between 1940 and 1972, several international coffee agreements were signed by over a dozen nations of Latin America and the United States. The purpose for such agreements was to control the export and import quotas, crop regulation, and overall coffee prices. Around 1972, Brazil lost its power in the I.C.A. (International Coffee Agreements) and the I.C.A. fell apart. The result of the I.C.A. downfall caused a period of price fluctuations that are still in effect today (Schapira, Schapira, Schapira 30).
Many cannot fathom the effect coffee has had on politics, religion, and the overall well being of this world. From Pope Clement VIII baptizing coffee in 1600 to the Manson Family murdering coffee heiress, Abigail Folger, in 1969, coffee has helped mold this world into an economic masterpiece. Coffee has helped usher in the artistic side as well as the judicial side of many countries and had therefore developed a name for itself that will continue to assist a busy college student on late night papers.
Kelly David Hulsing - 2004 coffee history
Brooks, Anita. The Picture Book of Tea and Coffee. John Day: New York. 1961.
“Coffee.” MSN Encarta-Coffee. 2004. 24 Jan. 2005.<http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761566024_1____9/coffee.html#s9>
“Coffee History Timeline.” History of Coffee from Plantation Coffee. 2004. 25 Jan.2005. <http://www.plantationcoffee.com/Coffee%20History.htm>
Schapira, Joel, David Schapira, and Karl Schapira. The Book of Coffee and Tea. St.
Martin’s: NewYork. 1975.“The History of Coffee.” Coffee History. 24 Jan. 2005.
<http://aboutcoffee.org/history.html>
“The History of Coffee.” Just About Coffee. 2004. 25 Jan. 2005.
<http://www.justaboutcoffee.com/index.php?file=history>
Copyright (c) 2007 Red Roaster Coffee Co. All rights reserved.