From Sufi mystics in 16th-century Yemen to hipster baristas in cities across the world today, the history of this caffeinated beverage is a long and fascinating one…
Who invented coffee?
The story of coffee begins in Ethiopia, where it grows wild. It was originally foraged by people who used the entire plant – including the coffee cherry fruit, which contains the coffee beans – for beverages and food. From Ethiopia, coffee was then exported to Arabia and southern Yemen.
The first manuscript recounting the story of coffee dates to around 1515. It says that a leader of a Sufi mystic sect in Yemen recommended coffee to his followers after he had encountered it while travelling through Ethiopia. He suggested it be used in their ceremonies, replacing a beverage that contained a hallucinogenic drug. Perhaps there was a shortage of this drug at the time, or perhaps the Sufi leader just wanted an alternative. Whatever the answer, this is where the coffee trade started.
How integral was enslaved labour to the production of coffee?
During the 18th century, pretty much all coffee was produced by slave labour. It’s a tropical crop – and forms a kind of companion planting crop to sugar.
Saint-Domingue became the biggest coffee producer in the 1770s and 1780s. The Haitian revolution in Saint-Domingue – which ultimately resulted in the creation of the first black republic – involved those who were enslaved on coffee plantations. What ensued was a complicated situation where there were free people of colour who owned coffee plantations where there would have been slaves. The great leader of Haiti – Toussaint Louverture –leased a coffee plantation that involved enslaved labour.
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What was the first coffee house?
The origins of the coffee house can be traced to the Middle East. The earliest known reference we have is for a coffee house in Damascus in 1534. We know that coffee houses were also opening in Istanbul by the 1550s.
In theory, anyone could use these early coffee houses. There was a protocol that meant you were seated and served in the order that you arrived, which undermined a huge number of status markers that normally existed in society. In this respect, these early coffee houses were revolutionary and open places.
How do the histories of coffee and tea in Europe differ from each other?
In Britain, tea and coffee arrived at the same time – alongside chocolate, which was also drunk at this stage. They tended to be served in the same places, although tea became the dominant drink. There are many reasons why this was the case. One was because of decisions made by the East India Company, which perceived control of the tea market as easier to achieve (coffee, alternatively, was imported through independent merchants to Britain).
Some people would argue that taxation regimes in Britain favoured tea, but there are other arguments as to why it became so popular too.
Firstly, tea was seen as a more domestic drink. It is easy to prepare – and was also considered more suited to women. Queen Catherine – wife of Charles II – was a notable tea drinker who appears to have set a precedent.
Secondly, it became a drink of the working and lower middle classes, partly because it was cheap, but also because when you add milk and sugar then it turns into a calorific hot drink that could sustain people through gruelling working conditions.
In Europe – particularly Western Europe – the situation is somewhat reversed. Coffee was the cheaper drink, and it therefore became the beverage of choice for workers. In Russia, though, tea dominated over coffee. So the history of these two drinks plays out differently in different markets.
What is the history of coffee in the US?
The history of coffee in the US is a great story. The most traditional version of this story relates to the Boston Tea Party, when Americans rejected British taxes on tea and – so the story goes – drank coffee as a patriotic duty instead. It wasn’t actually quite that simple.
The truly patriotic thing to do would have been to not drink British products at all, rather than just tea. So although the Boston Tea Party may have led to some stimulus for coffee, it didn’t really become the dominant drink until much later.
There was also a lot of coffee during the Civil War. Soldiers on the union side were supplied with it in large quantities – and that may well have created a lasting market for coffee. But even into the 1880s – when you do the sums – the amount of tea and coffee being drunk was the same.
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A few things happen after this. Firstly, coffee became a much more industrial crop as places like Brazil expanded their production. Secondly, coffee roasting became its own industry, with the US becoming the first country with a mass market for pre-roasted coffee.
The US was also a place that attracted huge numbers of migrants, particularly those from Europe who were used to drinking coffee.
When did coffee become synonymous with Italy?
The first espresso machines developed in Italy. Espresso is about using pressure to speed up the brewing process; the first machines to do this arrived in Milan in the early 1900s. At this point, they were just using very small amounts of steam pressure, and they would produce something that’s more like concentrated filter coffee today.
The way other coffee drinks developed is also quite interesting. The origins of the cappuccino, for instance, can be traced to the Austrian capital, Vienna. According to historical accounts, customers of the city’s coffee houses could order their drinks by colour, determined by the ratio of milk to coffee. The reason the drink became known as a ‘cappuccino’ is because its colour was very similar to the light brown robes worn by monks belonging to the Capuchin order.
The Austrians had a very strong influence in Italy, and we think the notion of cappuccino was imported there (although at the time it was just black coffee and white milk). The cappuccino then became what we know it as today through the development of the espresso machine.
Famously, Howard Schultz went to Milan in the early 1980s and saw the theatre of the Italian coffee bar. He took that concept and turned it into Starbucks – and that’s what spread coffee houses around the world.
Perhaps one of the most famous beverages in recent years is the flat white. The flat white developed in Australia. In the 1980s, changes in milk production in Australia meant that it didn’t froth very well. Signs were put up in some local coffee shops in Canberra and Melbourne saying, “We’ve got no cappuccinos, but we can do flat whites”.
Are there any notable figures in history who were particularly known for their coffee consumption?
The French philosopher Voltaire famously drank 50 cups plus a day. They were very small cups, but even so – that’s a lot of coffee! Mozart was also clearly a coffee drinker – he wrote the coffee cantata.
An interesting case is Napoleon. He was outraged by Haiti declaring independence and actually lost a lot of troops in a bid to regain it. When Napoleon was exiled to St Helena, coffee was grown there specifically so he can drink it.
Jonathan Morris is the author of Coffee: A Global History. Listen to the full interview on the HistoryExtra podcast