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The Pilgrimage of Coffee
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A Trip to Its Origin
The primary origin of the coffee plant or coffee is, according to some, the province of Kaffa in the Republic of Ethiopia or Abyssinia in Western Africa, in front of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. According to others, coffee proceeds from a region located between the ports of Mocha and Aden on the vast Arabian Peninsula in Southeast Asia, extending between the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, Irak and Jordan.
For some, then, coffee comes from Africa, and for others, from Asia. And although it seems absurd to say so, it proceeds, in reality, from the same place according to the theory of the Tectonic Plate that had its origin in the theory of the continental derive formulated by Alfred Wegener in 1911. Based on almost perfect relation between the East and West coasts of the Atlantic, Wegener stated that over 200 million years ago, earth was a great and only terrestrial mass (Pangea) surrounded by an immense ocean (Panthalassa). This great mass was fragmented into blocks that were slowly separated to form the continents, filling the free spaces with water from the oceans.
Geography seems to confirm this hypothesis. Yemen’s topography includes a mountainous area mainly represented by the Yemenite massive, followed by a coastal zone that is sandy and warm and borders Mocha and Aden, and the desert zone of Rub’al-Kali that leads to Oman. Ethiopian topography goes from the depression of Danokil on the East to the elevated mountainous regions of the West, where the Ras Dashán, one of the highest peaks of Africa, raises outstanding until reaching the high flatlands of the center of the country. Coffee was born in the low mountainous zones, both of Yemen as well as Ethiopia, and it was almost born in a golden crib in an exceptional media of a cool climate and rain and fertile soils that radically contrast with the typical drought of the region.
| Coffee’s Voyages |
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From this small, geographical area that joins Asia and Africa with the Red Sea in the middle, coffee started its long pilgrimage, first as a fruit and later as a plant, throughout the paths of the world.
Caravans would carry coffee to High Egypt and Nubia on one route, and the most important cities of Arabia on the other. Thus, coffee consumption became a habit in all the Islamic cities: Sana, Mecca, Medina, Damascus, Bagdad, Teheran, Beirut, Allepo, Constantinople, Cairo, Algeria, etc. By 1420, coffee was drunk in Aden and later in Syria, and in Constantinople in 1550. By the end of the XVI century, it had become a habit in the entire Muslim world.
The virtues of the beverage were diffused by Muslim pilgrims but not the plant which was carefully and jealously left in its place of origin. To sustain a monopoly on its highly profitable commerce, Arab businessmen only sold boiled or toasted green grains. In this way they obstructed the plant’s reproduction, preventing the grains to germinate and become productive coffee plants outside Arabia. Under these conditions, the Venetians were the first Westerners to import it in 1615, although in some place the first imports occurred at the end of the XVI century.
The commerce of coffee with Europe lasted for a long time, especially with the merchants of Venice who distributed coffee in their existing pharmacies in order to sell it as medicine.
The commercial coffee monopoly was sustained until the beginning of the XVII century when it was broken by the action of certain Muslim pilgrims who took the first fertile grains to India as contraband. The Dutch, who were great merchants, were already interested in this small business, and they shipped the first load of coffee to the Netherlands in 1637. Almost thirty years later the coffee business operated at a great scale in Europe. At the end of that century towards 1690, the Dutch (specifically a Dutchman called Nicolas Witten) took some shrubs from Yemen to his colony in Batavia (since 1949, Djakarta) in Indonesia. And from there he took them to his other colonies in the East Indies to give birth to the first plantations in Java and Sumatra.
In a short time the Dutch dependencies became the main coffee suppliers to Europe thanks to the initiative of the Dutch Company of the East Indies, and Amsterdam became the main commercial center for coffee exchanges in the world.
Later, the Dutch took coffee plants to the Botanical Garden at Leiden. One of these plants was presented as a gift to French King Louis XIV by the Mayor of Amsterdam in 1714 on the occasion of the signature of the Treaty of Utrecht between France, Spain, England and Holland to end the war of succession in Spain. The plant in question was planted in the Garden of Plants of Paris (created in the XVII century under the name of “Jardin du Roi” (the King’s Garden) and placed under the care of the famous naturalist, Antoine de Jussieu (1668-1758).
| The Introduction of the Coffee Plant in America |
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The coffee plant that was presented as a gift to France gave much to be talked about because it had many descendants that gave origin to the greater part of the coffee plants in the Western Hemisphere.
Several cuttings of that first plant were taken in 1723 to the French Island of Martinique by Infantry Officer Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu in a trip also full of problems.
The journey from the French port of Nantes to the Antilles was long and troublesome, and it almost failed due to the action of hurricanes, pirate attacks, an episode with a Dutch spy and because of a severe scarcity of drinking water. In his memoirs, de Clieu told his adventure: “Stronger than Tantalus, I choked and repressed my desires to be able to pour a tablespoon of water each day on the earth that contains my treasure and that, in a few instants because of the temperature that we have in these latitudes, evaporates”. But at last he fulfilled his purpose and the plant flourished in the soil of Martinique.
Brave de Clieu continued his story: “After eighteen or twenty months I had a very abundant crop. The beans were distributed in convents and among various inhabitants that knew the price of the product and suspected how they could enrich themselves. It spread progressively; I continue distributing the fruits of the young plants that grew under the shade of the common father. Guadaloupe and Santo Domingo soon were abundantly supplied…” The people from Martinique whose cocoa plantations had been reduced by the action of earthquakes or abundant rain dedicated themselves very enthusiastically to cultivate coffee. In three years, according to de Clieu, the island was covered with millions of coffee plants, as many as cocoa plants grew previously. And this marvelous plant taken to America by de Clieu was the mother of the coffee plants of the Antilles, and also of Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil, and on the return trip across the Atlantic, it procreated the coffee plants in Ivory Coast and Cameroon. Other coffee plants were brought to America from the Botanical Garden of Amsterdam to the Dutch Guinea (Surinam at the beginning of the XVII century). From there the coffee plants reached Brazil thanks to the missionaries. The English introduced coffee to the Isle of Jamaica in 1730. From there it passed to Cuba, Mexico and Costa Rica.
The coffee plants spread throughout the Caribbean Islands and other places on the continent, multiplying in Jamaica (1730), Santo Domingo (1731), Surinam, Cayenne, Haiti, Brazil (1727) and Central and South America.
| The Internationalization of the Exchange |
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Little by little the consumption of the beverage was spread and made popular, this habit being spread by the Islamic faith in continuous pilgrimages and marching at the pace of Arab expeditions and invasions. Afterwards it would be the Arab merchants who, through agreements with Venetian and French merchants, shipped it to Europe. Later, the Mediterranean route fell under the control of the Dutch who supplied the demand from the plantations of Java and Sumatra. Afterwards, its commerce spread along the routes of the Far Orient among Dutch, English, Spaniards and Portuguese, while on the routes of America, it was the French, English and Portuguese who were dominant. Much later the routes of East and West Africa were developed and coffee that was produced in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Zaire circulated.
In this way the habit of consuming coffee reached Venice in 1615; Paris in 1643 and Marseille in 1644; London in 1650 and Vienna in 1683.
The means of transportation changed and the routes became shorter. From the fragile sailing ships of the XVIII century, they passed to the powerful motor vessels, reducing navigation times and increasing the trustworthiness of trips. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 reduced costs and the duration of the trips was shorter as vessels that followed the Oriental routes and those of East Africa avoided the trip around Africa. The crating of the product was also modified; from jute or sisal sacks they passed to ventilated containers that carried the green coffee in bulks making loading and unloading operations easier.
| Coffee and Politics: From the Kahveh Khaneh to Modern Cafés |
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During the XVI century the habit of drinking coffee had extended to the entire Turkish Empire. In Constantinople and also in Medina, Mecca, Cairo, Damascus, Allepus, Bagdad and in all the Islamic capitals, public establishments were opened for the sale of the aromatic beverage. The first ones were opened in Cairo in the XV century. Afterwards, they were opened in Constantinople, ancient Byzantium that passed to the Turks under Mohamed II in 1453, the beginning of the Modern Age. When it became Istambul, many social customs changed and coffee houses or Kahveh Khaneh flourished. The two first were opened in 1554. Poets, “cadis” and high dignitaries of the Turkish Empire met there. They drank coffee, heard music, played games of hazard and spoke about everything, especially politics.
| The Birth of the Viennese Coffee House |
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In 1683 Vienna was besieged by the powerful army of Kara Mustafa. The troops of Jeana Sobieski and Charles of Lorraine came to the city’s rescue and managed to cease the siege thanks to the brave help of the Pole, Franz Georg Kilschitzky. This soldier who had lived among the Turks working as a “battaghi”, managed to cross the enemy lines and communicate an important message to Charles of Lorraine who came to the aid of Sobieski with fresh troops. At the end of the combat, 200,000 Turks fled, abandoning ammunitions and provisions, among which were more than 500 sacks of coffee.
The Viennese Municipality delivered the load of coffee to Kilschitzky as a reward for his heroic action, authorizing him to open the first café just two steps from the Cathedral of Vienna in 1683. This kaffehaus was called “Die Bleue Flasche” (The Blue Bottle) where Kolschitzky, who had learned from the Turks to prepare mocha, introduced certain innovations: he would filter the coffee powder and added three tablespoons of milk to obtain a unique beverage, turning the “coffee a la Turk” into “Viennese coffee”. He would serve it at breakfast time together with small breads shaped like a half moon or “kipfel”, that would later be known as croissant, to remind the Austrians of their victory over the Turks.
A few years later Vienna had become the European capital of cafés. Nowadays, the famous cafés are called “Landtmann”, “Hawelka, “Sacher”. Silberne” and the “Imperial Café”, among others.
| Coffee Becomes Fashionable in Paris |
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In the mid XVIII century, a sailboat from Egypt disembarked the first load of coffee at the port of Marseille after La Roque made it known in 1644. Marseille then was the French door for oriental commerce, and merchants from Marseille had agencies on the main Mediterranean ports in alliances with Turkish merchants. There, La Roque opened the first French café in 1654, a sort of salon-divan where the first tasting of coffee among the Europeans took place. The caové, casie, kawe or café was timidly made known in Europe, until 1669 when it became a fashion, thanks to the mediation of the Ottoman Ambassador, Saliman Mustafá Aga.
In 1672, an Armenian with the name Hartoudian and who people called Pascal, established a small coffee business (“Maison de Caoué”) at the fair at Saint Germain that opened yearly on the left bank of the Seine. When Pascal moved to London, one of his waiters called Francisco Procopio dei Coitelli, from Sicily, opened his own café in 1686 under the name of “Café Procope”.
At the Café Procope, coffee, cold beverages, sherbets and coffee ice cream was sold to the Parisian customers, among whom were Rousseau and Voltaire who consumed some forty cups of coffee daily.
Procope’s salon was very successful, and he soon opened other cafés on Tournon Street, the most important one in front of the “Comedie Francaise”, which was decorated with tapestry, mirrors, crystal chandeliers and marble tables. Other coffee houses competed with the “Procope” with similar fame and illustrious customers, such as the “Café de la Régence” opened in 1651 at the plaza of the Palais Royale, or the “Foy” (1749), “des Mille Colonnes”, “du Caveau (1784), “des Aveugles”, “Hardy” (1799), the “Anglais” (1802, and the “Turc” (1780).
In a few years, the fashion of cafés took over Paris and cafeterias appeared in all the neighborhoods. By 1721, the city had 380 cafés. The cafés became meeting places for lyric artists, officers and writers during the XVII and XVIII centuries.
Towards 1731, vast coffee plantations were growing in Java, the Isle of La Reunión, the Isle of Cayenne, Martinique, Jamaica, Santo Domingo. D’Aussy commented in 1782 that “consumption has been typified in France: there is no burgess home where coffee is not served, there is no apprentice, cook, maiden in waiting that does not have coffee and milk for breakfast in the morning”.
We have arrived at 1788. France is suffering a national bankruptcy and political opposition grows daily, meeting at the cafés that became the center of unrest, substituting taverns and cabarets. At the time there were 2000 coffee salons in Paris. At the “Procope”, Desmoulins, Danton and Marat met; at the “Regence”, Robespierre and his followers did likewise. An ethnic botanist, McKenna, sustains that “if harangue is the mother of revolution, then coffee and cafés must be their midwife”. A historian, Michelet, expressed the opinion that coffee, together with chocolate and tea, precided the birth of the Age of Lights because for the first time, people had the opportunity to entertain themselves in society without getting intoxicated. And coffee illuminated the spirit of the revolution because it increased the brilliancy of its addicts, many of whom were revolutionaries.
| The Appearance of English Coffee-Houses |
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Coffee reached England towards 1650, together with tea and chocolate, and this arrival represented an alternative instead the consumption of alcohol to which the English were very addicted. But it was simply a furtive arrival that only years later became fashionable. In 1652, a Turkish Jew by the name of Jacob opened the first coffee-house in Oxford. A few years passed before the Armenian or Greek, Pasqua Rosée, opened the first London café at Saint Michael’s Alley in Cornhill. Afterwards, other cafés would be opened and were called “the penny universities” because for the price of one penny, a customer could have a cup of coffee and talk about anything he wanted. It was the times of the so-called “Puritan Community” (1649-1659), and cafés became the favorite places for public gatherings. In one of them, the Miles Café, the first electoral urn was introduced and used.
By the end of the XVII century, coffee was regarded as a “sober” beverage, not intoxicating, that tuned temperance, especially in a society where alcohol (wine and beer) had played an important role as stimulants and nourishment. This characteristic, together with that of an anti erotic drink, fit in very well into the style of the English Puritan movement and aesthetics, and of Protestant ethics, who adopted it as the drink for the body and the soul, granting it great ideological importance. A third characteristic is added to these, that of “cerebral stimulant”. It was the XVII century, the era of rationalism, that constructed the absolutist bureaucratic State. In this context, coffee acted as a beverage with historical meaning. It was infiltrated into the body and developed, through its chemical and pharmacological action, whatever rationalism and Protestant ethics fulfill in the ideological and intellectual system. The property that coffee has of exciting the spirit and sustaining it artificially awake is very well adjusted to the need of extending and intensifying the time available for work. This trend of thought dominated the XVII century and part of the XVIII. During those times cafés fulfilled the social function of being the center of communications for businessmen, journalists and artists. Little by little, coffee, considered a public beverage, was introduced into the domestic scene until becoming, in the XVIII century, the breakfast and luncheon drink. This was the position of coffee until it was displaced by tea, a beverage also considered as “sober” that responded better to the economic interests of the British colonies.
The British Industrial Revolution was beginning and coffee made its way as an ideal beverage because the exhausting work in the industries demanded a larger consumption of stimulants that increased energy and allowed a greater concentration in the execution of repeated tasks.
| The Spanish Cafés |
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The first cafés were introduced in Spain during the second half of the XVIII century by Italians such as Gippini, who had establishments in Barcelona, Cádiz, Madrid, San Sebastián and Seville. In spite of its late introduction, cafés prospered rapidly and became centers for political discussions.
Later, at the end of the XIX century and the first half of the XX, many cafés were opened and became true literary circles, enlivened by get-togethers. Miguel de Unamuno said of them, in his retirement speech from the University of Salamanca, that “the true popular Spanish university has been the coffee houses and the public plazas”, setting a distance from those who criticized the literary get-togethers in cafés, considering that in those places, time for creative idleness was irresponsibly dissipated.
Various Madrid cafés have been the subject of Spanish musicals as occurred with the “Cádiz”, the “Barcelona” and the “Pombo”, loved by Ramón Gómez de la Serna. The “Fontana de Oro” Café, for example, inspired the subject of the first novel by Pérez Galdós in 1870.
Another Spanish city that is famous for its cafés is Barcelona where in the mid XIX century, there were several cafés that were famous for their service and their get-togethers, such as the “Café de las Siete Puertas”, inaugurated in 1840, or “Los Guardias”, Useletti” and “El Rincón” at the “Ramblas”.
| The Cafeterias of Others |
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Italian cafeterias were born in Venice towards 1647. One of the most well-known was opened in 1720 by Floriano Francesconi with the name of “Caffé de la Venecia Triunfante” that later changed its name to “Caffé Florian”, located at the San Marcos Plaza and that became an important center for cultural and commercial activities. Later, in 1759, there were over 100 cafés in Venice. In Rome there were other café like the “del Greco”, founded in 1760 on the Via Condotti and that has become one of the most famous cafés in the world.
During the XVII century, coffee reached the Northern countries and later these countries became large consumers. In 1885, coffee arrived at Stockholm, and five years later, in 1690, two cafeterias were opened there. During those years the coffee fashion also reached Norway (1675), Denmark (1685) and Finland (1700).
Of all the European countries where the coffee fashion planted its roots and cafeterias raved, the exception was Holland although it had contributed so much to the spread of the coffee plants and the habit of consuming coffee. They did not create any particular establishments destined to the public consumption of coffee, and were contented to drink it inside their homes although it had become a national fashion.
Before coffee substituted tea, after the Stamp Act of 1766 that started the Tea Party rebellion in 1773, coffee was already consumed in the XVII century in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in the United States of today. Later, Captain John Smith took it to the colony of Virginia. During the first years of the XVIII century, coffee houses were found in certain cities such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Just as it is said that the French Revolution was born in the “Café Foy” in Paris, some say that the American Revolution saw light in the “Green Dragon” in Boston.
| Our Cafeterias |
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At the beginning of the XIX century we find cafés in Caracas. Some were bars with the facade of coffee houses, but in all of them travelers would gather to have light meals in whose preparation many times imported products were used. The fashion of cafés in Venezuela began a little late in comparison with other countries such as Mexico where a café was opened in its capital city in 17895 at the “Plaza de El Zócalo”.
The first cafés established in Caracas were, according to newspaper sources, the “Café del Angel” on the Calle de Venezuela and the “Café de la Confederación” on the Calle de Barcelona that were operating in 1814.
Other cafés were opened later, such as the “República de Colombia” on the Calle de las Leyes Patrias in 1821, the “Café Mercantil” in 1838, the “Español”, the “Setoain”, “El de las Flores” and “El Avila”. Towards 1877, the “Restaurant Café El Louvre” operated in Caracas, owned by Pereira Lozada who served his customers at the Bolivar Plaza in small portable tables.
In some cafés in Caracas such as the “La India”, there were literary gatherings where in 1898 some famous writers attended, among whom Manuel Diaz Rodriguez, José Gil Fortoul, Gonzalo Picón Febres, Rufino Blanco Fombona, Andrés Mata and others.
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Cover of the book
Voyage de L´Arabie Heureuse
by Jean de la Roque.
The port and city of Moka,
a print from the XX century,
Jacobs-Suchard Museum.
Printed image of
Officer Gabriel de Clieu,
one of the instructors
of the coffee plant in America.
A fine lady
taking breakfast
de Clere print, XVIII century.
Lithography, The Fine Days
of the Café de la Rotonde,
at the Palais-Royal, 1968.
Detail of the book
Viennese Café: the Learned,
by Moriz Jung.
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