Coffee History

The news of the drink spread quickly, particularly through the Muslim Pilgrims traveling to Mecca. The Turks became passionate enthusiasts and they spread it all through Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria and the Middle East; the love of coffee was as great then as it is now.

The Arabs did not want the infidel nations to start growing their beloved coffee, so they stopped the export of coffee beans unless they has been fried or cooked in boiling water to kill the seed. But it was impossible to prevent the spread of the illustrious bean. Every visitor to Arabia came back with stories of coffee ceremonies and coffeehouses, singing the praises of this astonishing 'wine of Arabica'. The Venetian traders delivered it all around southern Europe, and Dutch traders took it to Northern Europe and Amsterdam.

The Dutch were the keenest business people of the day; they stole the first coffee tree and brought it to Europe in 1616. Thence they set up plantations in their colonies in Java, the Celebes, Timor, Bali and Sumatra. In 1714 the burgomaster of Amsterdam thought, in the interests of improved trade and international relations, that it would be a good idea to present the Sun King - the King of France Louis XIV - with a coffee tree. The great king was so impressed that he gazed at the tree for a whole day. He passed it on to the royal botanist, Antoine de Jussieu, who tended it carefully for 10 years in the Jardin des Plantes.

The gift to the king was to have profound implications. Here the story becomes a little hazy, but in 1723 there was a young navel officer in Paris, Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu. He was utterly intrigued by this drink - coffee, and by all the fascinating coffee houses that had come to Paris in its wake. The story is told that Gabriel went to the royal physician, who refused to part with a tree. But then the gallant de Clieu seduced a lady in the court, and through her assistance acquired a young coffee plant. He put it into a glass box and sailed for Martinique.

His adventures did not stop there. His ship went through fearful tempest and the flooding by the salt water went close to destroying the plant. 'This precious plant' was to be the progenitor of a great industry. Within 50 years there were not only 19 million coffee trees in Martinique, but coffee plantations spread all around the West Indies, to the Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico and Cuba.

By 1727, Holland and France were battling to gain rights to coffee cultivation. Both banned the export of seedlings and ripe coffee cherries. The penalty for doing so was death. Meanwhile Brazil, which had exactly the right climate was desperate to get into this lucrative coffee industry. Luck was on the side of the Brazilians. At the time there was a border dispute between the French and Dutch. The Emperor of Brazil was invited to serve as an arbitrator, so he sent the gallant Lieutenant Colonel Francisco de Melo Palheta, a man who had quite a reputation with the ladies. He conducted long hearings during the day with parties involved in the dispute and in the evenings he used his charms on the wife of the French Governor, with great effect.

At last, when the dispute was resolved, the Governor held a banquet in Palheta's honour. There in front of all the guests, the Governors wife presented Palheta with a bouquet of flowers. Amongst those flowers was the branch of a coffee tree.

By 1906, Brazil was producing 97 percent of the world's coffee. This state of near monopoly came about through disease. In the middle of the 19th century a wind blown fungus, hemilleia vastatrix, swept through Asia. It was even worse than the deadly phylloera, which nearly destroyed the wine industry in France. No spray, no chemical, no method of cultivation had the slightest effect on this leaf disease which killed the coffee trees.