Coffee History - P4

Coffee History Chronology

As early as the 6th century, Arabs and Abyssinians were aware of the stimulating effects of coffee. Abyssinians supposedly crushed the fruit and ate the peels while the Arabs made tea from the dried skin and pulp. Certainly at any time after the 6th century individuals may have roasted coffee for beverage preparation but there is no written record of roasted coffee until about the 13th century when word got around that coffee seeds had an intriguing aroma when burnt.

In a way, Mohammed (570 – 632 AD) set the stage for the popularity of tea and coffee when he discouraged the use of all alcoholic beverages. I imagine tea was in common use, probably in the form of locally grown herbal teas such as mint or chamomile, before caffeinated teas were available from China and India. (Were there taverns before Mohammed that were closed after the ban on alcohol or did they merely change into teahouses?) Often beverage vendors served from street-curb booths or kiosks in market areas. Another connection with Mohammed and coffee would be through the Sufi order some four hundred years later.

879    Arab travelers visiting Canton mention tea in their log.

925     Rhazes (AD850-925), a Persian doctor from Iraq and major figure in the history of medicine. This follower of the practice of Galen and Hippocrates compiled a medical encyclopedia in which he refers to a bean called “bunchum” thought to be coffee. His discussion of its healing properties no doubt led to the belief that coffee was known as a medicine over a thousand years ago.

1037     Avicenna (980-1037) Arabic, Ibn Sina, the father of modern medicine. Interpreted Aristotle in Neoplatonic fashion but was known in the west principally for his contributions to medicine and writings on other sciences. In his encyclopedia of medicines he also comments on the medicinal properties of “bun”.

c.1200    Sufism, a mystical philosophy of Islam arising in the late 10th and early 11th century would eventually discover the stimulating properties of coffee tea. Members of this semi-monastic order emphasized a personal union of the soul with god. The order is well known for its expression in symbolic Persian poetry. (e.g., poets Ferid ed-Din Attar, Hafiz, Jami and Omar Khayyam).

The Dervish, a Sufi order that uses exhaustive whirling dancing and chanting to reach a transcendental state of ecstasy, found coffee tea particularly helpful to bolster stamina during their practice.

1258     Sheik Omar, (disciple of Sheik Schadheli, the legendary founder and patron saint of the port of Mocha) by chance discovers coffee as a beverage while in exile at Ousab in Arabia.

1350     Persians, Egyptians and Turks are making pottery ewers specifically for serving coffee

c.1450     Gemaleddin a Mufti of Aden is supposedly cured of serious illness with coffee.

1453     Turkish law makes it legal for a woman to divorce her husband if he fails to provide her daily family quota of coffee.

1470     Coffee was first known to be used in Medina and Mecca

1500     Roasting and brewing becomes common in Arabia where coffee-tents, coffeehouses and coffee kiosks start springing up wherever people congregate.

1505     Arab traders introduce coffee trees to Ceylon

1510     Coffee being served in Cairo

1511    Khair Bey, a corrupt governor of Mecca bans the use of coffee, The Sultan sends word that coffee is sacred and has him removed from office, woo-hoo!

1517     Coffee in Europe from Arabia via Mediterranean. The practice of taking African slaves begins in Europe. Coffee used in Baghdad and Ormuz.

1517     Ottoman Turks take control of Cairo, Mecca and Medina. Mocha Coffee is now Turkish and will be for the next three hundred years.

1520     Chocolate brought to Europe from Aztec Mexico

1521     Cortes assumes control of Mexico after the destruction of Aztec state Magellan killed in Philippines and Sebastiano del Cano sails on. Manufacture of silk introduced to France

1522     Spanish conquer Guatemala. Pascuel de Andagoya discovers Peru from the area that is now Panama

1529     Siege of Vienna

1530     First coffee house opens in Damascus, Syria

1532     First coffeehouse opens in Aleppo Syria. Sugar cane first cultivated in Brazil

1545     First European botanical garden in Padua

1554     Coffeehouses opened in Constantinople

1559     First Ottoman siege of Vienna, failed (see 1683)

1573     First German sugar refinery. German physician Rauwolf writes about use of coffee in Syria

1578     Levant Trading Co. founded in London for trade w/ Turkey

1579     England Eastland Co. founded for trade w/ Scandinavia. Portuguese merchants set up trading station in Bengal

1580     Italian cooking becomes popular in Europe. Venice imports coffee from Turkey to Italy

1582     Leonhart Rauwolf refers to “Chaube” use in Aleppo. Rauwolf is a physician from Augsburg. He studied in Italy, France and Valencia and Montpellier, from 1573 to 1576 he traveled through the orient (studying herbs?) He is the first European to describe the drink, how it is served and its basic substance the bean.

1584     Banco Rialto founded in Venice

1585     Venetian emissary in Istanbul, Gianfrancesco Morosini reports to the Venetian senate that Turks imbibe in a black water made from the infusion of a bean which the Turks call “cavee”.

1598     Englishman, Anthony Sherley reports Persians drink a certain liquor that they call “coffe”, made from seeds.

1591     Italian doctor and naturalist, Alpino (Prosper Alpinus) botanically describes coffee in “Medicina Egyptorium” He traveled to Egypt in the retinue of the Venetian consul. From his study of plants along the Nile he published “De Plantis Aegypti Liber (Venice 1592) with woodcut illust of coffee. In writings from Cairo, he reports of seeing a “caova” plant in a private garden.

1594     English traders return from overland journey to India and Ceylon. England breaks Portuguese sea trade monopoly with India

1595     Dutch begin colonizing East Indies. The Dutch will become the major player in coffee. See overview at end.

1597     Dutch take Batavia, Java (Jakarta, Indonesia)

1600     English East India Co. founded

1600     Introduction of coffee into India by Baba ud-din a Muslim pilgrim returning from Mecca

1601     Abolition of monopolies in England. Brothels closed in Germany owing to spread of VD

1602     Dutch East India Co. founded in Java

1604    Voyages of English East India Co. to Java, Spice Islands and Agra

1607     Bank of Genoa fails after national bankruptcy in Spain

1608     First checks “cash letter” in use in Netherlands

1609     Founding of The Bank of Amsterdam. Tea from China shipped for first time to Europe by Dutch East India Co.

1609     An English seaman noted that he rested by a “cohoo howse” in the desert near Aden.

1609     The word “coffe” appears in an English newspaper.

1610     Dutch East India Co. introduces the term “share”

1610     Portuguese Pedro Texeira writes of Kavah.

1613     Amsterdam Exchange built

1615     Coffee is introduced to Venice from which it seduces travelers from all Europe. It is popularly known as “The wine of Araby.”

1615     Italian, Pietro della Valle, while in Istanbul, writes to a friend in Rome that there is a drink used in Istanbul that prevents sleep.

1616     William Harvey, English physician, physiologist and professor of anatomy. Discoverer of circulation of blood and the function of the heart as a pump. Published in 1628. Apparently he got to know and appreciate the drink during his student days in Padua where he had been introduced to it by some fellow students from Arabia. This British habitué established the necessary connections to ensure a continued supply after returning to London.

1616     Merchant, Pieter Van der Broecke purchased coffee in Mocha and even brought saplings back to Amsterdam botanical Gardens.

1618     Founding of Dutch West Africa Co.

1621     Dutch West India Co. founded. Beginning of Dutch spice monopoly

1625     Sugar is used for the first time to sweeten coffee in Cairo. Although sugarcane was native to Indonesia it was introduced and thrived in Egypt.

1625     First English settlement on Barbados

1627     Englishman, Sir Thomas Herbert traveled in an ambassadorial suite to Persia, 1627-1630. His report also chronicles the Kaldi goat story of he discovery of coffee

1632     First coffee shop in London

1636     Dutch settle Ceylon, coffee likely found from earlier Arab settlements. Tea appears for first time in Paris.

1640     First European cafe in Venice. Coffee reportedly being served at various English colleges

1643     Coffee becomes popular in Paris

1650     First coffeehouse in England, Oxford. First tea in England.

1652     First London coffee establishment. A Greek named Pasqua Rosee, in collaboration with an Englishman, Daniel Edwards opens a coffee shop “in a shed in the churchyard in St. Michael, Cornhill.

1657     Drinking of chocolate introduced in London. London excise tax on coffee merchants levied at 8 pence per gal. Newspaper advertisement read: coffee served in London near the Old Exchange twice a day, once in the morning and again at three.

1658   After forty years of considering the economic possibilities of the coffee trade, the Dutch begin cultivation in Ceylon.

1660     Café Procope opens in Paris. English duty on coffeehouse is listed as 4 pence per gal.

1660     1.900.000 kilos of Egyptian Mocha (105 of today’s containers) landed in Marseilles. One third for local consumption and the rest consigned to Northern Italy, Switzerland and Northern Europe.

1663     By royal decree all English coffee houses are required to be licensed. Guilds and taxation have caught up to coffee.

1663     First coffee shipment from Yemen to Amsterdam.

1663     Dutch East India Company establishes a branch in Mocha and exports between 80 and 200 tons annually.

1664     First coffeehouse opens in Amsterdam

1664     English export 22 tons from Yemen. 100 tons in 1690 and 600 tons in 1726.

1665     Ottoman peace treaty with France and Austria. Ambassador Kara Mahmud Pasha, sets up elaborate encampment in Vienna including coffee tents which introduced coffee to many in Vienna for the first time. Peace and trade lasted from 1667 to 1683 during which time coffee beans were imported into Vienna.

1668     Coffee replaces beer as New York’s favorite breakfast drink. The same would happen in Germany two years later.

1669     Turkish Ambassador Suleiman Aga brought coffee to the court of Louis XIV.

1670     Coffee is first sold in Boston 103 years before the Boston Tea party.

Coffee used in royal household of Louis XIV

1671     First coffeehouse in Marseilles frequented by merchants

1671     Faustus Naironus Banesius, a Syrian Maronite monk and professor of philosophy, in a tract on coffee recounts a story of the discovery of coffee. It is the most common and still widely told today. It recounts the tale of Kaldi , a goatherd, and his visit to a monastery. The Arab and Turkish versions of this legend are basically the same but no monastery or Christian monks are consulted to explain the odd behavior of his goats. Rather the herdsman follows his animals to the source of the intoxication and discovers coffee. In other versions there are two herdsmen named Sciadli and Aidrus.

1672     Pascal, an Armenian opens coffeehouse in Paris

1675     England’s King Charles II attempts to close 3000 coffee houses referring to them as “Seminaries of Sedition”

1679     First German coffeehouse

1683     First coffeehouse in Vienna, Hof zur Blaun Flasche, “House under the Blue Bottle” Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki considered a hero by the people of Vienna for his actions at the 1683 Battle of Vienna. According to a popular legend, he opened the first café in the city, using coffee beans left by the retreating Ottoman Turks. His name often rendered in German as Georg Franz Kolschitzky.

1686     An ad in the Frankfurt journal noted that an Italian merchant was selling chocolate, tea and raw coffee beans.

1686     Café Procope opens in Paris

1687     Invention of the box-mill grinder with drawer Also known as the European coffee mill, it was in common use by 1700.

1688     Underwriters meet at Lloyds’s Coffeehouse

1689     London Coffeehouse opens in Boston

1690     Dutch introduced coffee from Arabia to Java. Dutch introduce coffee into Ceylon from Java

1696     The Dutch commander of the Malabar Coast, Adrian Van Ommeren took coffee berries from Cannnore to Batavia.

1696     Lloyd’s News, weekly newspaper first published

First coffeehouse opens in New York. The King’s Arms

1698     Mrs. White’s chocolate house opens in London, will become Tory party HQ

1697     Green Dragon coffeehouse opens in Boston

1700    Coffee introduced to Malabar Coast of India from Aden, Arabia

1702     Asiento Guinea Co founded for slave trade between Africa and America

1706     Dutch growers in Java send hoe first shipment of beans along with seedlings for the Amsterdam botanical museum.

1709     The French start buying coffee in Mocha

1711     First coffee imports to Amsterdam.

1712     A Dutch Lt. Ressons, presents Louis XIV with coffee seedling but it fails to thrive.

1714     Brancas, Mayor of Amsterdam gifts another coffee tree to Louis XIV.

1714-15     On a second French privateeting expedition to Mocha, the ships medical doctor has the opportunity to cure the Sultan of Yemen of a painful ear infection. In gratitude the Sultan presents him with 60 seedlings. The trees are presented to captain Dufresne d’Arsel of the Hunter, a ship owned by the French East India Company and taken to the Island of Bourbon. Forty die on the voyage and of the twenty delivered only one thrives. The surviving tree seeded the island 1726 saw the first export from Bourbon and continued until 1850 when sugar cane production became more lucrative.

1714     Dutch send seedlings to Surinam (Dutch Guyana). Seedlings were smuggled to Cayenne in neighboring French Guyana. By

1722 French Guyana was in the coffee business.

1715     French growing coffee in Haiti

1716     French growing coffee on Bourbon (Reunion)

1717     Coffee introduced into Portuguese Madagascar from Mozambique. Introduced into Bourbon and Mauritius from Arabia by Fougerais Grenier

1718     Dutch introduce coffee cultivation from Java to Surinam, Dutch Guiana

1719     Oriental Trading Co. founded in Vienna

1720     Army Lieutenant to Louis XIV, de Clieux transports coffee seedling to French Martinique, which will eventually supply seed to all South and Central America. In 1730 the first export shipment went to Ireland and Denmark because the French East India Company still held monopoly in France. 1736 the French monopoly ended and 700 tons were shipped to France.

1720     French growing coffee in French Guiana

1720     Caffe Florien opens in Venice

1720     Ostend coffee merchants buying coffee in Yemen

1722     Cayenne introduces coffee from Surinam. Dutch extend cultivation into Sumatra, Celebes, Bali, Timor and Flores

1726     Lloyd’s List published twice weekly in London

1727     Coffee first planted in Brazil

1728     Slave rebellion in Dutch Guiana

1730     English introduce coffee cultivation to Jamaica

1732     Introduced into Jamaica by Sir Nicholas Lawes

Bach’s celebrated Coffee Cantata is published in Leipzig

1740     Dutch introduce the “wet or washed” method of coffee processing

1748     Coffee from Santo Domingo introduced to Cuba

1750     Spanish introduce coffee into Cuba, Puerto Rico and other Carib islands

1750     Coffee cultivation started in Guatemala

1750     Mocha’s golden age of coffee export comes to an end as Dutch coffee from the East Indies and French coffee from the West Indies under cut the price of Yemen coffee.

1752     Brazil steps up coffee cultivation

1753     Linnaeus publishes “Species Plantorum”, coins name “Coffea arabica”

1755     Coffee cultivation started in Puerto Rico

1756     First chocolate factory in Germany

1756     Introduction of coffee met with government resistance leading to a short-lived    Swedish ban on coffee drinking.

1760     Coffeehouses common in German cities

1760     Portuguese introduce seedlings to Brazil from Portuguese Goa on the Malabar Coast of India

1760     Slave rebellion in Jamaica

1770     First export of coffee from Cuba

Chicory is first used with coffee in Holland. It is the processed root of Belgian endive.

1770     Portuguese introduce coffee through Rio de Janeiro to start production in Minas Gerais

1774     Catholic missionaries encourage the spread of cultivation around Brazil

1767 or 1777?     Frederick the Great of Prussia tries to block the importation of coffee as an economic protectionist policy when more money was being spent on imported coffee than domestic beer. His tax officers were charged to sniff out contraband beans and came to be known as “coffee smellers”. Another justification went: “Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be depended upon.”

1784     Spanish introduce coffee to Caracas Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia

1790     Coffee cultivation started in Mexico

1791     Slave revolt in Santo Domingo (Haiti)

1794     Slavery abolished in French colonies

1796     Coffee introduced into Costa Rica

1800     Brazil exporting coffee

1802     France suppresses slave rebellion in Santo Domingo

1807     England prohibits slave trade

1810     Invention of the disk pulper. Drum pulper 1850

1818     Coffee cultivation started in Cordova and Orizaba, Mexico

1825     First cultivation of coffee in Hawaii is introduced from Brazil.

1827     Pumping percolator invented

1829     Slavery abolished in Mexico

1834     Spanish inquisition ended (1478-1834) after 356 years

1840     British increase coffee production in India

1840     Peugeot manufactures coffee mills until 1975

1843     Slave population in Cuba estimated. 436,000

1849     Daumsches Kaffeehaus buys bentwood chairs designed by Frenchman, Michel Thonet. Known for their unique design, weight, strength and of course comfort they will become the style of choice in almost all coffee shops thereafter.

1850     Drum pulper invented. Important for producing washed coffee after abolition.

1852     Coffee introduced into El Salvador from Havana

1861     United States slavery prohibited

1869     Coffee rust epidemic devastates Ceylon coffee.

1879     Coffee plantations flourish in Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua

1900     Over production in Brazil causes market crash

Today Coffee grows in about 80 countries around the world and is grown commercially in about half of them. Coffee is now the world’s most popular beverage second to water.

Note, dates are not verified but second hand references should be considered only approximate.

Netherlands enters the coffee fray. 1500 – 1700

With the increasing economic strength of the Netherlands, England and France during the 16th century, the outrageous claim to ownership to half the world, expressly sanctioned by the papacy, came under increasingly heavy attacks from the aspirant nations who were busily engaged in setting up their own capitalistic social orders. They opposed in word and deed the exclusive claims of Spain and Portugal. With advances in naval architecture, the building of bigger and better armed ships, a new “Sport of Kings” (and Queens) commenced, framed by the creation of alliances, signing treaties and conducting wars, sometimes with each other, sometimes against each other. (see Age of Discovery chronology)

Territorial claims abounded, border treaties were signed and breached: plunder and freebooting were everyday occurrences; overseas possessions were seized, exchanged and sold. The one thing all these rulers seemed to have in common was ending monopoly on eastern trade. Surly greed and Empire has nothing to do with it.

By 1600 the example of the Medici were put to the test in Holland. The capitalistic system was taking form in the Netherlands with the formation of new State Banks and the creation of Joint Stock Companies. Holland was the first model capitalist nation in Western Europe. In1602 the Dutch East India Company was founded and in 1621 the Dutch West Indies Company took form. These companies united under one organization previously disparate and rival companies and by means of through and well planned voyages over the worlds seas was able to break the dominance of Spain and Portugal.

Backed by enormous capital invested by shareholders, they managed to set up and maintain bases abroad, gain access to the “Spice Islands” and intimidate the Portuguese. In the year of the founding of the Dutch East India Company (1602) five Dutch ships managed to destroy a small Portuguese fleet off the coast of Java. One year later the neighboring islands of Ternate and Amboina fell to the Dutch. In 1605 the Company inflected its heaviest defeat on the Portuguese in Southeast Asia by capturing the bases on the Moluccas, the gems of the Spice Islands.

In 1614 a delegation of merchants and horticulture specialists visited Aden in order to study how Arabs grew and processed coffee. Two years later a plant was exported to Amsterdam. From this tree seeds would be sent throughout Dutch colonies.

After 1626 with the establishment of the West Indies Company (1621) the Dutch stepped up activities in South America. They were already established in northern Brazil, much to the consternation of the Portuguese. In 1661 they sold these Brazilian possessions to the Portuguese and six years later (1667) exchanged their North American territories (New Amsterdam, (1664) with the British for what would become Dutch Guiana (Surinam). Coffee would not be the main export of Surinam but there is record of some production there in1718.

Meanwhile, in 1658 the Dutch scaled up coffee production in Ceylon with new seed stock from Amsterdam. In 1699 seedlings were transplanted from the much closer, Malabar Coast to start new plantations on Java. In succession, Sumatra, Bali, Timor and Celebes would support new coffee gardens.

It was here in what is now Indonesia that the Dutch improved the way coffee was to be processed. The original method practiced by the Arabs was unsuitable in the more humid tropical climes. The Dutch developed a system of removing the peel of the fruit before drying. This system would be copied around the world and become known as washed coffee or the wet process. In 1810 the disk pulper was invented and in 1850 the drum pulper was invented to further mechanize the wet process. Previously slave labor was expended on manual pulping making the wet process much more expensive.