History Of Coffee
Thursday, August 26th, 2010Of the beverages available to consumers these days, not many are as well-known as coffee. Perhaps the greatest way to obtain caffeine short of the new energy products being developed, coffee is definitely popular in a number of places, from the home to the office, from small cafes to trendy eating places.
The history of coffee can be tracked for just over a thousand years, a somewhat short time period in comparison to alcoholic beverages, which have been consumed since prehistoric times, and tea, which starts back more than one thousand years BC. Not surprisingly, coffee has spread globally as a popular beverage. A short look at the history of coffee will show the way it has gained its recognition.
African Sources
The history of coffee as a drink started off in Ethiopia some time around the ninth century. Legend suggests that herders in Ethiopia noticed that their goats were noticably perky after eating the berries of a specific plant, and therefore had the notion to consume it as a stimulant. The reality is that coffee probably had already been produced as a beverage by the ninth century as a normal consequence of cultivation associated with plants. From Ethiopia, the beverage spread to North Africa, including Egypt.
Middle Eastern Success
The introduction of coffee to Egypt caused it to be accessible to places with trade to the rest of the Middle East, where coffee became a common beverage by the 1500s. Soon after its introduction, authorities put a ban on the beverage because of its stimulant attributes. However, much like prohibition in America, the ban on coffee didn’t survive and was later rescinded. At this time in history, though, tight regulations on the commodity were in position. Though coffee in its roasted form started to be exported to Italy as well as other European countries, export of the unroasted coffee beans and plants was still banned.
Colonization And Coffee
This restrictive control over the export of coffee plants didn’t last. This period in the history of coffee concluded when Dutch merchants smuggled coffee seeds out of the Middle East in the 1600s, where they were planted on the island of Java, which is still a leading exporter of coffee in the present day and also shares its name with the nickname for the drink. Curiously, as coffee plants spread to more European colonies, another century in the history of coffee, in the eighteenth century, the plants were smuggled to Brazil, which is still the largest exporter of coffee beans.
Coffee in the US
The history of coffee in US follows that of early conflicts. Brought in there in the 1700s, the popularity of coffee did not take off until the Revolutionary War, when tea was scarce and colonists looked to various other drinks. Coffee once more gained in popularity during the war of 1812 for similar reasons.
However, the time when coffee drinking evolved to exactly where it became an American fixture appears to be during the Civil War, when demand was sufficient that it became a permanent fixture as a beverage in a great many American households. Via colonization and conflicts, the history of coffee seems to follow that of the history of people, and its widespread reputation across the world illustrates that it is truly a global sensation.
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