Not many beverages today have such widespread popularity as coffee. Probably the greatest way to obtain caffeine short of the new energy drinks being developed, coffee is popular in a variety of places, from the home to the office, from small cafes to swanky eating places.
The history of coffee can be tracked for a little more than a thousand years, a relatively brief period of time when compared with alcoholic beverages, which have been drunk since prehistoric times, and tea, that dates back more than a thousand years BC. Despite this, coffee has spread globally as a popular drink. A look at the history of coffee will show the way it has acquired its acceptance.
African Origins
The history of coffee as a drink started off in Ethiopia some time during the 9th century. Legend has it that herders in Ethiopia remarked that their goats were especially perky after consuming the berries from a particular shrub, and so got the notion to eat it as a stimulant. The reality is that coffee probably had already been produced as a drink by the 9th century as a normal result of cultivation of vegetation. From Ethiopia, the drink spread to North Africa, including Egypt.
Success In The Middle East
The introduction of coffee to Egypt meant it was accessible to ports with trade with the rest of the Middle East, where coffee grew to become a popular beverage by the 1500s. Shortly after its introduction, authorities placed a ban on the beverage because of its stimulant qualities. However, like prohibition in the United States, the ban on coffee didn’t survive and was eventually rescinded. At this point in history, though, tight regulations on the product were in place. Though coffee in its roasted form started to be exported to Italy and other European countries, export of the unroasted beans and plants was prohibited.
Colonization And Coffee
This tight control covering the export of coffee plants didn’t continue. This period of the history of coffee concluded when Dutch traders smuggled coffee seeds from the Middle East in the 1600s, where they were planted on the island of Java, which is still an important exporter of coffee in the present day and also shares its name with the nickname for the particular drink. Oddly enough, as coffee plants spread to other European colonies, another century into the history connected with coffee, in the eighteenth century, the plants were smuggled to Brazil, which is still the largest exporter of coffee beans.
Coffee in America
A history of coffee in the united states follows that of early conflicts. Introduced there during the 1700s, the popularity of coffee did not take off until the Revolutionary War, when tea was scarce and colonists looked to other drinks. Coffee once again gained in popularity through the war of 1812 for similar reasons.
However, the time when coffee drinking developed to where it was an American fixture is apparently during the time of the Civil War, when demand was sufficient that it became cemented as a drink in a good many American households. As a result of colonization and conflicts, the history of coffee generally seems to follow that of the history of people, and its wide-spread popularity all over the world reveals that it is truly a global sensation.
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