History Of Coffee

As early as the ninth century, coffee became famous in the highlands of Ethiopia. The legend was written that Khalid (Arab goat herder) became curious when after his goats ate the berries of the coffee plant, they became lively. As curiosity played in his mind, he boiled the berries, he tried to drink it and satisfied with the taste (he became lively also just like his goats) that was the first coffee produced in history. From Ethiopia, coffee spread out through Egypt and Yemen, then it was in Arabia that coffee berries were first roasted and brewed just like what we do today. And by the middle of 15th century, it spread out all over the rest of the Middle East, Persia, Turkey as well as Northern Africa.

Leonard Rauwold (German physician) who gave the description of coffee after his 10-year trip to the Near East in 1583 said it was a beverage as black as ink but it could be useful to fight different kinds of illnesses most especially in our stomach.

The Middle East is a Muslim world but still coffee spread out to Italy. A thriving trade developed between Venice and North Africa together with Egypt and the Middle East. They brought many goods to Venice including coffee to the Venetian port despite appeals from different religious groups to ban the Muslim drink until it became popular all over Europe in 1600 until Pope Clement VIII accepted it as a Christian beverage. In 1645 the first European coffee house opened. The first to import coffee in a large scale in 1616 and the first to defy the Arab prohibition on the exportation of plants or unroasted coffee seeds were the Dutch lead Pieter van den Broeck who smuggled seedlings from Aden into Europe. An in 1711, the Dutch grew the crop in Java and Ceylon as well as being the first exporters of Indonesian coffee to the Netherlands. Coffee became popular in England with the effort of British East India Company and later introduced it in France, Austria, and Poland.

During the Colonial period, coffee reached North America but was not as popular there as in Europe. The demand for coffee was so dramatically increased that dealers had to hoard their scarce supplies and raise prices in the Revolutionary War and there was also a reduced availability of tea from British merchants. After the Revolutionary War in 1812 and during the American Civil War, there was a high demand for coffee, so their primary commodity was secured in the United States.

And because of the in-demand needs of the First World countries, coffee became the primary cash crop of many Third World countries such as Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and Ethiopia.