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\u2026 <\/p>
The story of coffee begins in Ethiopia, where it grows wild. It was originally foraged by people who used the entire plant \u2013 including the coffee cherry fruit, which contains the coffee beans \u2013 for beverages and food. From Ethiopia, coffee was then exported to Arabia and southern Yemen.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
During the 18th century, pretty much all coffee was produced by slave labour. It\u2019s a tropical crop \u2013 and forms a kind of companion planting crop to sugar.<\/p>\n
Saint-Domingue became the biggest coffee producer in the 1770s and 1780s. The Haitian revolution<\/a> in Saint-Domingue \u2013 which ultimately resulted in the creation of the first black republic \u2013 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 \u2013 Toussaint Louverture \u2013leased a coffee plantation that involved enslaved labour.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n In Britain, tea and coffee arrived at the same time \u2013 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<\/a>, which perceived control of the tea market as easier to achieve (coffee, alternatively, was imported through independent merchants to Britain).<\/p>\n Some people would argue that taxation regimes in Britain favoured tea, but there are other arguments as to why it became so popular too.<\/p>\n Firstly, tea was seen as a more domestic drink. It is easy to prepare \u2013\u00a0and was also considered more suited to women. Queen Catherine \u2013 wife of Charles II \u2013 was a notable tea drinker who appears to have set a precedent.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n In Europe \u2013 particularly Western Europe \u2013 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.<\/p>\n The history of coffee in the US is a great story. The most traditional version of this story relates to the Boston Tea Party<\/a>, when Americans rejected British taxes on tea and \u2013 so the story goes \u2013 drank coffee as a patriotic duty instead. It wasn\u2019t actually quite that simple.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t really become the dominant drink until much later.<\/p>\n There was also a lot of coffee during the Civil War. Soldiers on the union side were supplied with it in large quantities \u2013 and that may well have created a lasting market for coffee. But even into the 1880s \u2013 when you do the sums \u2013 the amount of tea and coffee being drunk was the same.<\/p>\n\n
What was the first coffee house<\/strong>?<\/h3>\n
How do the histories of coffee and tea in Europe differ from each other?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
What is the history of coffee in the US?<\/strong><\/h3>\n