HISTORY OF COFFEE


Info borrowed from the website of The Roast and Post Coffee Company
Bridgeview House, Redhill Lane, Elberton, Bristol, South Glos. BS35 4AE. UK



Early Years


There are a number of differing stories as to the origin of coffee and how it was discovered. One story is that of an exiled Arab Sheik who saved himself from starvation by making a soup from the berries of the coffee shrub. The most common is, however, that of Kaldi the goatherd or shepherd who, in around 600-800 AD, was tending to his animals on the mountainside one night in Eastern Africa, most likely modern day Ethiopia, when he noticed that they were acting strangely. On investigating this he realised that they had been eating the cherry-red berries of a nearby shrub. As a result of this they remained awake, jumping and leaping around the whole night - even the older goats. Curious, the goat herder picked some and tasted them himself. He found that they invigorated him and made him more wide awake.


It was about this time that a monk called Chadely or Scyadly from a nearby monastery was passing. The goatsherd told him about the goats and he demanded to be shown this plant. Kaldi showed the monk a pretty little shrub with a greyish bark and brilliant foliage, the slender branches of which, at the base of their leaves, had bunches of small white flowers mingles with clusters of small berries, some green, riper ones a clear yellow colour and yet others, which had reached complete maturity, of the size, shape and colour of a cherry. It was the coffee shrub.
 

The monk, wishing to try the effects of these berries, crushed a few into a powder and poured boiling water over them to make a drink. This was the first cup of coffee - it was not until much later, however, that coffee was first roasted. Impressed with the results of the drink in making him wider awake and yet not affecting his intellectual capabilities, the monk took the new discovery back to his monastery realising that it would help him and his fellow monks stay awake during their long hours of prayer. Coffee soon spread from monastery to monastery and, therefore, became in much demand with devout Moslems, believing it to be a divine gift brought by an angel from heaven to the faithful.


And so coffee had been discovered. In the centuries that followed, the people of this land absorbed coffee into their culture and daily routine. It was not, however, until later that coffee was discovered by the outside world.


Coffee appears to have originated in North Africa, in Abyssinia, and certainly has a presence around the Red Sea area by about 700 AD. History tells us that other Africans of the same era fueled up on protein-rich coffee and animal-fat. 

 
The drinking of coffee soon spread to Arabia most likely by Arab traders and by the end of the 9th Century a drink known as qahwa (literally meaning "that which prevents sleep") was being made by boiling the beans. The drinks made from coffee soon became known as "Arabian Wine," as Muslims, who were forbidden to drink wine, used coffee with its stimulating powers as a substitute. It is known to have been drunk during prayers, in the mosques, even at the Holy Temple at Mecca and before the tomb of the Prophet.
 

It was not until after coffee had been consumed as a food product, a wine and a medicine that it was discovered, probably by complete accident, that by roasting the beans a delicious drink could be made. This did not happen until sometime between 1000AD and 1200AD probably in Arabia. By the end of the 13th century, however, Muslims were drinking coffee regularly. Wherever Islam went, coffee went too: from India to North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean. Coffee was first cultivated in the Yemen area of Africa between 1250 and 1600 when extensive planting occurred.
 

The trade in coffee was jealously guarded by the Arabs who made every effort to prevent other countries acquiring their fertile beans. They would not allow coffee beans to be taken out of the country unless they had first been dried in sunlight or boiled in water to kill the seed-germ. In fact, it is said that no coffee seed sprouted outside Africa or Arabia until the 1600s. As a result of this, for many centuries, the Yemen served as the world's primary source of coffee.


Some seed beans or plant cuttings were eventually taken out of Arabia, however, either by being smuggled or inadvertently taken by groups of pilgrims on their annual travels to Mecca.


The first coffee shop that is known to have opened was Kiv Han in Constantinople (later Istanbul) in 1475 after being introduced to Turkey two years early by the Ottoman Turks. Coffee soon became a part of social life as coffee shops multiplied rapidly and within a few years there were hundreds of them in the city.


People visited these coffee houses to talk, listen to music, watch dancing, play chess and other games, listen to the tales of wandering storytellers, or listen to other learned conversations and, of course, to drink coffee! Coffee houses in Turkey became known as the "Schools of the Wise", because so much could be learned there.


In the middle of the 16th Century, coffee was already drunk in Egypt, Syria, Persia and Turkey, and coffee shops were to be found in the cities of Medina, Cairo, Baghdad, Alexandria, Damas and Istanbul. Around the same time, Soliman the Magnificent's Turkish warriors introduced the drink to the inhabitants of the Balkans, Central Europe, Spain and North Africa.


Attempts to ban coffee during these early years occurred quite regularly - often to little effect. In 1511, Khair Beg, the corrupt governor of Mecca, was executed after attempting to ban coffee - fearing that it's influence might foster opposition to his rule. The sultan on hearing about this declared that coffee is sacred and ordered the governor's death. Another try at banning coffee came from The Grand Vizir of the Ottoman Empire in 1656. He prohibited coffee and closed the coffee houses of Turkey.


Coffee was hardly known in Europe before the seventeenth century. European travellers, who visited Middle Eastern countries at this time, probably visited the coffee houses, where business would be transacted, or saw street coffee pedlars carrying coffee for sale in copper pots.
 

When these travellers returned, their reports about coffee aroused European interest in coffee. Perhaps these travellers brought back small samples of coffee beans, but the Venetians were the first people to bring larger quantities of coffee into Europe. In 1615, Venice received Europe's first shipment of green coffee beans and the first coffee house there opened in 1683. 

 
Coffee was known in the first half of the 17th Century in Venice and Marseille but there was no trade in beans there. Although famous for their tea drinking, the British were the first European nation to embrace the pleasures of coffee drinking on a commercial basis. The first coffeehouse was in Oxford in 1650 where it was opened by a Turkish Jew named Jacob. More opened soon after in London in 1652 where there were soon to be hundreds.
 

The Ambassador of the Turkish Ottoman Empire to the court of Louis XIV in Paris brought coffee into fashion in Parisian High Society around 1669. As laid down by Turkish custom, he offered it to all who came to visit him and persuaded the Sun King to give the drink a try. The King, however, decided he prefered hot chocolate!


The first cafe selling coffee was opened in Paris in 1686. Francesco Procopio de Coltelli of Sicily is credited with starting Le Procope - an establishment that's still in business today. It was frequented by Voltaire, Diderot and Robespierre.
 

Coffee reached Vienna in 1683, just after the city had been besieged in war with the Turks. The coffee was retained by a Polish Army Officer, Franz Georg Kolschitzky. He had previously lived in Turkey and, being the only person there who knew how to use it, claimed the stocks of coffee left by the fleeing Turkish army for himself.


He later opened central Europe's first coffee house in Vienna and was reported to be quite rich as a result of this venture. He also established the habit of refining the brew by filtering out the grounds, sweetening it, and adding a dash of milk hence inventing Viennese coffee and also the pastries served with it.


The popularity of coffee spread in Europe to such an extent that, during the 17th and 18th centuries, there were more coffee shops in London than there are today. Coffee shops were nothing like the trendy shops that we have today. A true coffeehouse was crowded, smelly, noisy, feisty, smoky, celebrated and condemned. On the street in London you located the nearby coffeehouse by sniffing the air for roasting beans, or by looking for a wooden sign shaped to resemble a Turkish coffee pot.
 

It was the coffeehouses of England that started the custom of tipping waiters and waitresses. People who wanted good service and better seating would put some money in a tin labelled "To Insure Prompt Service" - hence "TIPS".


Coffee shops were influential places, used extensively by artists, intellectuals, merchants, bankers and a forum for political activities and developments. When they became popular in England, the coffee houses were dubbed "penny universities". It was said that in a coffee house a man could "pick up more useful knowledge than by applying himself to his books for a whole month". A penny was the price of a coffee.
 

In Italy, around 1600, priests asked Pope Clement VIII to forbid the favourite drink of the Ottoman Empire considering it part of the Infidel threat. On taking one sip, the pope found the drink delicious and baptised it - making it an acceptable Christian beverage.
 

In 1674 The Women's Petition Against Coffee was set up in London. Women complained that men were never to be found at home during times of domestic crises, since they were always enjoying themselves in the coffee houses.


They circulated a petition protesting "the grand inconveniences accruing to their sex from the excessive use of the drying and enfeebling liquor".


A year later, King Charles II tries to supress the coffee houses because they were regarded as hotbeds of revolution but his proclamation was revoked after a huge public outcry and the ban lasted just 11 days. 


Some of the coffee houses in London became very well known with different groups of workers and soon became the kingpins around which the capital's social, political and commercial life revolved. Jonathan's Coffee House in Change Alley was where stockbrokers usually met - it eventually became the London Stock Exchange. Likewise, ship owners and marine insurance brokers visited Edward Lloyd's Coffee House in Lombard Street - it became the centre of world insurance and the headquarters of Lloyds of London.


Johann Sebastian Bach composed his "Kafee-Kantate" or Coffee Cantatas in 1732. 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 tastes! Lovelier than a thousand kisses, sweeter far than muscatel wine! I must have coffee..."


Prussia's Frederick The Great attempted to block imports of green coffee in 1775 as Prussia's wealth is drained. He condemned the increase in coffee consumption as "disgusting" and urged his subjects to drink beer instead. He employed coffee smellers, who stalked the streets sniffing for the outlawed aroma of home roasting. Public outcry changes his mind.


Coffee fever spread throughout Europe in the 18th Century and the French had introduced coffee into the New World by 1715. Coffee consumption in Britain began to decline as import duties for coffee increased. The British East India Company concentrated on importing tea as the market began to grow.
 

In Europe, however, people were gradually inventing new and improved ways of making coffee and, in 1822, a Frenchman Louis Bernard Rabaut invented a machine which forced the hot water through the coffee grounds using steam instead of merely letting it drip through. The first espresso machine had been born.
 

Coffee is believed to have arrived in North America in 1607 when Captain John Smith helped to found the colony of Virginia at Jamestown. By 1668 coffee had replaced beer as New York City's favourite breakfast drink with coffeehouses in New York, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia and elsewhere.


Most of these coffeehouses were more like pubs and taverns than the genuine coffeehouses of Europe. They served not only coffee but also chocolate, ales, beers and wines. They also rented rooms to sailors and travellers. One famous coffeehouse in New England was the Green Dragon in Boston. At first it was popular with British officers but in later years it came to be the gathering place of John Adams, Paul Revere and other revolutionaries plotting against England. 

 
Tea remained the favourite beverage in America until 1773 when the people of Boston revolted against the excessively high tax King George had placed on tea. They raided English merchant ships which were in the harbour and threw their cargoes of tea into the sea. The event became known as the "Boston Tea Party", and afterwards the people of Boston and America changed from drinking tea to coffee which was seen as a patriotic duty.
 

It was the Dutch, however, who, with a coffee plant smuggled out of the Arab port of Mocha, became the first to transport and cultivate coffee commercially in 1690. They founded the East India coffee trade by taking the coffee tree to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and their East Indian colony, Java, and as a result, Amsterdam became a trading centre for coffee.


Coffee was becoming a precious product fit for Royal gifts and, in 1714, the mayor of Amsterdam sent a young coffee tree to King Louis XIV of France as a present. These seedlings were entrusted by the King to the botanists of the King's Royal Botanical Garden (now the "Jardin des Plantes").

 

It is the descendents of this plant who ended up producing the entire Western coffee industry. A young naval officer, Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu, was in Paris on leave from Martinique, a French colony in the Carribean. Imagining Martinique as a French Java, he requested clippings from his King's tree. Permission was, however, denied. Determined, de Clieu led a moonlight raid of the King's Garden and managed to steal a seedling from the greenhouses. De Clieu set sail for Martinique only to discover the worst was still to come.

 

On the return journey to Martinique, de Clieu was to encounter a number of setbacks. A "basely jealous" passenger attempted to steal his coffee seedling and, when unable to get the plant away from him, tore off a branch.


The ship was then attacked and almost captured by pirates. Getting over that, it suffered a violent storm and when the skies became clear they became far too clear and the ship was becalmed. Water grew scarce but the young coffee tree was kept alive because de Clieu used part of his own tiny water ration to water it.


On arriving in the Carribean, de Clieu planted the tree on his own estate in Martinique where, under armed guard, it yielded a total of about 18 million trees by 1777.


The French and the Dutch were, like the Arabs before them, anxious to protect their monopoly over cultivation. Brazil's emperor, however, wanted a cut of the coffee market and, in 1727, he send Lt. Col. Francisco de Melo Palheta to French Guiana to mediate a border dispute between the French and Dutch.


Not only did the Colonel settle the dispute but he also managed to initiate an affair between him and the governor's wife. The plan payed off and, as a farewell gift at a state dinner, she presented him with a sly token of affection: a bouquet in which she hid cuttings and the fertile seeds of coffee.


It is from these shoots that the world's greatest coffee empire and the great coffee plantations of Latin America emerged. By 1800 Brazil's monster harvests would turn coffee from a drink for the elite into an everyday drink for the people.
 

The twentieth century has seen a number of important developments in coffee including the development of both instant and decaffeinated coffees.


Decaffeinated coffee was first invented in 1903 when a German coffee importer, Ludwig Roselius, turned a batch of ruined coffee beans over to researchers. Although not the first to remove caffeine, they perfected the process of removing caffeine from the beans without destroying any flavour. He marketed the coffee under the brand name "Sanka" (a contraction of "sans caffeine"). Sanka was introduced into the US in 1923.

 
The first soluble coffee was invented by a Japanese-American chemist called Satori Kato who lived in Chicago. However, the first mass produced instant coffee, was the invention of George Constant Washington, an English chemist living in Guatemala.


While waiting for his wife one day to join him in the garden for coffee, he noticed on the spout of the silver coffee pot, a fine powder, which seemed to be the condensation of the coffee vapours. This intrigued him and led to his discovery of soluble coffee.


In 1906 he started experiments and put his product, Red E Coffee, on the market in 1909. In 1938, Nestle, after being asked by Brazil to help find a solution to their coffee surpluses, invented freeze-dried coffee. Nescafe was developed and first introduced into Switzerland.


Instant coffee really took off after 1956 when commercial television was introduced. The commercial breaks were too short a time in which to brew a cup of tea, but time enough for an instant coffee. The entrepreneurs of the coffee world like Nestle nd General Foods realised this was their big chance and advertised their instant coffee during the breaks. In retaliation, the tea companies introduced the tea bag in a desperate bid to compete.
 

The government took over the tea trade in Britain during the Second World War introducting rationing which continued until 1952. After the war, however, people didn't start drinking as much tea again as expected - they drank coffee instead.


The modern-day espresso machine was perfected by Achilles Gaggia in Italy in 1946. He managed to use a higher pressure than steam by using a spring powered lever system. Gaggia brought his revolutionary espresso machine to London in the 1950s and opened a mocha bar in Frith Street in Soho - hence the modern day coffee bar was born. The first pump driven espresso was produced in 1960 by Faema.


Because of the economic importance of coffee exports, a number of Latin American countries made arrangements before World War 2 (1939-1945) to allocate export quotas so that each country would be assured a certain share of the coffee market.


The first coffee quota agreement was arranged in 1940 and was adminstered by the Inter-American Coffee Board. It was not, however, until 1962 that the idea of establishing coffee export quotas on a worldwide basis was adopted. This was set up by the United Nations as the International Coffee Agreement.


During the five-year period when this agreement was in effect, 41 exporting countries and 25 importing countries agreed to its terms. The agreement was re-negotiated in 1968, 1976 and 1983. Participating nations failed to sign a new pact in 1989.


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