Coffee History of the America’s and the World.

Did you know that coffee is second only to oil, coffee is the most valuable legally traded commodity in the world!

We love it, we rely on it, and we drink it in massive quantities. It is estimated that 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed each day worldwide. New Yorkers are said to drink 7 times the amount of any other U.S. city, which is why it may seem like there is a Starbucks on every corner of Manhattan. Famed French writer and philosopher Voltaire was rumored to have drunk 40 – 50 cups per day. Coffee is a daily ritual in the lives of millions of humans around the globe. Where exactly did this caffeinated phenomenon begin?

As with most foods that have been around for centuries, coffee’s beginnings are enveloped in mystery and lore. There is a popular Ethiopian legend wherein coffee is discovered by a goat herder named Kaldi, who found his goats frolicking and full of energy after eating the red fruit of the coffee shrub. Kaldi tried the fruit for himself and had a similar reaction. After witnessing their strange behavior, a monk took some of the fruit back to his fellow monks; they too spent the night awake and alert. Of course, they would have been reacting to coffee’s high dose of caffeine. This natural stimulant also serves as an inborn plant pesticide, protecting the coffee fruit from insects.
Before coffee became our morning beverage of choice, it appeared in a variety of different preparations. In its most basic, unprocessed form, coffee is a cherry-like fruit, which becomes red when ripe; the coffee bean is found at the center of the red coffee fruit. Seen in the pictures below.
Green Coffee fruit.


Ripe Red Coffee Fruit.



Early on, the fruit were mixed with animal fat to create a protein rich snack bar. At one point, the fermented pulp was used to make a wine-like concoction; incidentally, a similar beverage was made from the cacao fruit, before the advent of chocolate, which goes to show that humans are especially adept at finding new ways to imbibe. Another drink that appeared around 1000 A.D. was made from the whole coffee fruit, including the beans and the hull. It wasn’t until the 13th century that people began to roast coffee beans, the first step in the process of making coffee as we know it today.
The word “coffee” has roots in several languages. In Yemen it earned the name qahwah, which was originally a romantic term for wine. It later became the Turkish kahveh, then Dutch koffie and finally coffee in English.

The modern version of roasted coffee originated in Arabia. During the 13th century, coffee was extremely popular with the Muslim community for its stimulant powers, which proved useful during long prayer sessions. By parching and boiling the coffee beans, rendering them infertile, the Arabs were able to corner the market on coffee crops. In fact, tradition says that not a single coffee plant existed outside of Arabia or Africa until the 1600s, when Baba Budan, an Indian pilgrim, left Mecca with fertile beans fastened to a strap across his abdomen. Baba’s beans resulted in a new and competitive European coffee trade.
In 1616, the Dutch founded the first European-owned coffee estate in Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, then Java in 1696. The French began growing coffee in the Caribbean, followed by the Spanish in Central America and the Portuguese in Brazil. European coffee houses sprang up in Italy and later France, where they reached a new level of popularity. Now, it is de rigueur for Parisians to indulge in a cup of coffee and a baguette or croissant at the numerous coffee cafes throughout Paris.
Coffee plants reached the New World during the early 18th century, though the drink wasn’t really popular in America until the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when making the switch from tea to coffee became something of a patriotic duty. 



The Civil War and other conflicts that followed also helped to increase coffee consumption, as soldiers relied on the caffeine for a boost of energy. It may have started a bit later here, but Americans love coffee just as much as the rest of the world. Teddy Roosevelt himself is counted among America’s great coffee drinkers due to his rumored consumption of a gallon of coffee daily! Roosevelt is also said to have coined Maxwell House’s famous “Good to the Last Drop” slogan after being served the coffee at Andrew Jackson’s historical home, the Hermitage, in Tennessee.

By the late 1800s, coffee had become a worldwide commodity, and entrepreneurs began looking for new ways to profit from the popular beverage. In 1864, John and Charles Arbuckle, brothers from Pittsburgh, purchased Jabez Burns’ newly invented self-emptying coffee bean roaster. The Arbuckle brothers began selling pre-roasted coffee in paper bags by the pound. They named their coffee “Ariosa,” and found great success selling it to the cowboys of the American West. It wasn’t long before James Folger followed suit and began selling coffee to the gold miners of California. This blazed the trail for several other big name coffee producers, including Maxwell House and Hills Brothers.

In the 1960s, a certain awareness for specialty coffee started to grow, inspiring the opening of the first Starbucks in Seattle in 1971. Today, the grass-roots coffee movement continues to grow with the increase of small independently-owned cafes boasting sustainable, locally roasted, fair trade beans. Coffee has become an artistic trade that is valued for its complexity of flavors and terroir, much like wine.
From a simple cup of black coffee to a complex, multi-adjective Starbucks order, each coffee drinker has their own favorite way of indulging in this caffeinated wonder-drink. So It is not so stretching the truth to say that coffee played an important role in the founding of this country. From its introduction to European culture, coffee had been considered synonymous with intellectual discourse. Because of the connection between coffee and politics, it is perhaps the most important drink for American history.

On American Soil

The great thinkers of the 18th Century would gather at colonial coffee houses/taverns, such as the Green Dragon in Boston, to discuss the important issues of the time. In 1765, a crowd gathered burn an effigy of Andrew Oliver a Liberty Tree. Oliver was doing the unpopular work of King George III by selling stamps, a form of taxation.

The group eventually dispersed, but they gathered the next day at the Green Dragon to discuss the political events of the previous day. In so doing, they formed a group that they dubbed the Sons of Liberty. The Green Dragon Inn, Tavern and Coffee House was their regular meeting place; (seen in the picture below).

Green Dragon Tavern in Boston – credit BPL (Wikipedia) 

Coffee as Patriotism

When the British sought to punish the colonies by unfair taxation on tea, coffee became not only the preferred drink, but the patriotic one as well. The East India Company couldn’t conceive of the colonists doing without tea, so they sent over a full cargo of tea in a marketing scheme that would pay the taxes to the King, but cut out the middlemen merchants. This scheme infuriated the colonists. A particularly energized group in Boston carried out the event which became known as the Boston Tea Party. They threw tea overboard and vowed against drinking tea, in favor of coffee.

With the advent of the Revolutionary War, coffee houses soon became the preferred meeting place of the newly formed Continental Congress. The most famous coffee house of the time was the Merchant’s Coffee House in Philadelphia, also known as the City Tavern. It was there where the Declaration of Independence was first read aloud to the public.

One could argue that America began to define itself by it’s connection with coffee as opposed to tea. So stand up for something you believe in, drink coffee and make our forefathers proud.

Founding Fathers at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Image by John pictured below.

References

1 Refer to History of Food by Toussant-Soamat translated by Anthea Bell, page 585.

2 Green Dragon Tavern – Wikipedia page

Title image by Gabbt Orcutt

Research Sources

“Coffee.” National Geographic. National Geographic Society, n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2013.
Davidson, Alan (2006). 

The History of Coffee Culture in America. Dir. Devin Hahn. Smithsonian.com. Smithsonian Media, n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2013.
“Maxwell House Coffee – “Good to the Last Drop!” Myths, Legend or True Trivia on Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt Association, n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2013. Ponte, Stefano (2002). 

“The ‘Latte Revolution’? Regulation, Markets and Consumption in the Global Coffee Chain.” World Development (Elsevier Science Ltd.), n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2013. Smith, Andrew F. (2007). 

The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford University Press, UK.

The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. Oxford University Press, NY.