Coffee merchandising

Coffee is at least 1,000 years old. It was first mentioned in literature by Rhazes, a famous Arabian physician, about the year 900; only Rhazes called it bunchum. The early Arabians called the bean and the tree that bore it bunn; the drink, bunchum.

Our word “coffee” comes from the Arabic qahwah, through the Turkish kahveh, being originally one of the names employed for wine in Arabic. The word has no connection with the town of Kaffa in Abyssinia, as many writers have supposed. Its final form in French became café; in German, kaffee. The North American Indians knew it as kaufee.

Coffee was first a food, then a wine, a medicine, and lastly a beverage. Its use as a popular beverage dates back 700 years.

Coffee Was First a Food Ration

In the beginning, the whole ripe berries, beans, and hulls were crushed and molded into food balls held in shape with fat. This was about 800 A. D. The Galla, a wandering African tribe, still make use of these food balls. One of them, of the size of a billiard ball, constitutes a day’s ration, and sustains them on long marches. The inhabitants of the island of Groix, off the coast of Brittany, also thrive on a diet that includes roasted coffee beans. But, however nourishing these isolated groups may find coffee taken in this way, so far they have no imitators, and the rest of the world wisely prefers to use it in the liquid form.

Following its use as a food ration, a kind of aromatic wine was made in Africa from the fermented juice of the hulls and pulp of the ripe berries. Next a medicine was made by boiling the dried berries in water. About 1200, the practice began of making a drink from the dried hulls alone and boiling in water. Toasting the hulls followed, and about 1300 it was the custom to roast the dried beans after hulling and to boil them whole. Grinding in mortars was a later development.

Same Early Legends

Sheik Omar, a doctor-priest and a disciple of Sheik Schadheli, the patron saint and legendary founder of Mocha, quite by chance discovered coffee as a beverage at Ousab in Arabia in 1258. Omar was in exile and facing starvation. He was forced to eat certain berries which he found growing on wild bushes in his Ousab retreat. In this way he discovered that they were possessed of stimulating—or, as he called it, magical—properties. Later he tried roasting them and boiling them in water. He got even better results. Next he prescribed the drink for those of his former patients who came to visit him, and these carried back such stories of benefits received that Omar was invited to return in triumph to Mocha, where a monastery was built in his honor and he himself was made a saint.

There are several versions of this legend. One ascribes the discovery of the drink to an Arabian herdsman in upper Egypt, or Abyssinia, who complained to the abbot of a neighboring monastery that the goats confined to his care became strangely frolicsome after eating the berries of wild shrubs found near their feeding grounds. The abbot tried the berries on himself, and, being astonished at their exhilarating effects, experimented by boiling them in water and ordering the decoction served to his monks, who too often fell asleep over their nightly religious ceremonies. Thereafter the monks found no difficulty in keeping awake.

About 1300, it is recorded that the coffee drink was a popular decoction among the churchmen. It was made from the roasted berries, crushed with a mortar and pestle, the powder being placed in boiling water and the drink taken down, grounds and all.

About 1454, Sheik Gemalledin, mufti of Aden, having discovered the virtues of the coffee berry on a journey to Abyssinia, sanctioned the secular use of coffee in Arabia Felix. It quickly reached Mecca and Medina. About 1500, the propagation of the plant had spread from Abyssinia through Arabia and into Ceylon.

Early Coffee Persecutions

In 1511, soon after the drink had reached Cairo, and the coffee house had become a favorite resort, Kair Bey, governor of Mecca, being outraged by the extent to which the new drink was being consumed by clergy and laymen, called a consultation of lawyers, physicians, and leading citizens, and succeeded in browbeating a majority into issuing an indictment of the beverage, while he issued an edict prohibiting its use. His master, the sultan of Cairo, ordered it revoked shortly thereafter, and Kair Bey subsequently came to an inglorious end, being first exposed as “an extortioner and a public robber” and then slowly “tortured to death.”

In 1524, the kadi of Mecca tried his hand at closing the coffee houses, because of disorders, but permitted coffee drinking in private. By 1532, the coffee house had taken root in Damascus and Aleppo. In 1534, a religious fanatic denounced coffee in Cairo, and led a mob against the coffee houses, many of which were wrecked. The city was divided into two parties,—for and against coffee. To put an end to the agitation, the chief judge invited the leading physicians to a conference, and at the end not only served coffee to all present, but drank some himself.

In 1554, the first coffee houses were opened in Constantinople by Shemsi of Damascus and Hekem of Aleppo. Here, too, religious zealots soon became jealous of their popular appeal, and about 1570 they put forth the argument that roasted coffee was a kind of charcoal, and, as the Koran forbade the use of charcoal among the other unsanitary foods, the use of coffee was against the law of the Koran. The mufti was so impressed by this that he ruled that coffee was forbidden by the law of the Prophet.

The prohibition was more honored in the breach than in the observance. Coffee drinking continued in secret, instead of in the open; and when Amurath III, about 1580, at the further solicitation of the churchmen, declared that coffee should be classed as a wine, also forbidden by Mohammed, and ordered all coffee houses suppressed, the people only smiled and persisted in their disobedience. The civil officers, finding it useless to try to destroy the custom, winked at violations of the law, and, for a consideration, permitted the sale of coffee privately; so that many Ottoman “speakeasies” sprang up,—places where coffee might be had behind shut doors, shops where it was sold in back rooms.

This was enough to reestablish the coffee houses by degrees. The prohibition was repealed de facto, if not de jure. Then came a mufti less scrupulous or more knowing than his predecessor, who declared that coffee was not to be looked upon as coal, and that the drink made from it was not forbidden by the law. There was a general renewal of coffee drinking; religious devotees, preachers, lawyers, and the mufti himself indulging in it, their example being followed by the whole court and the city.

First Printed References

The first printed reference to coffee appeared as chaube in Rauwolf’s Travels, published in German at Frankfort and Lauingen in 1582. Rauwolf was a German physician and botanist, who made a journey to the Levant in 1573.

The first authentic account of the origin of coffee was written by the sheik Abd-al-Kadir, in an Arabian manuscript still preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris.

The first printed reference to coffee in English appeared as chaoua in a note of Paludanus in Linschoten’s Travels, translated from the Dutch and published in London in 1598.

About 1600, coffee cultivation was introduced into southern India by a Moslem pilgrim, Baba Budan.

The first printed reference to coffee in English, employing the modern form of the word, appeared in W. Parry’s book, Sherley’s Travels, as coffe, in 1601. In 1610, Sir George Sandys in his Travels recorded, “The Turks sip a drink called coffa (of the berry that it is made of) in little china dishes, as hot as they can suffer it.” Francis Bacon also wrote in 1627, “They have in Turkey a drink called coffa made of a berry of the same name, as black as soot, and of a strong scent. This drink comforteth the brain and heart and helpeth digestion.” In 1632, Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, wrote, “The Turks have a drink called coffa, so named from a berry black as soot and as bitter.”

Coffee Baptized by the Pope

The news of coffee caused early dissensions in Italy. Because coffee drinking originated in Mohammedan lands, many churchmen in the 16th century were concerned about the propriety of permitting its use in Christendom, denouncing it as an invention of Satan. Discussion arose, and the disputants appealed to Pope Clement VIII for a decision. The pope wisely decided to drink some before committing himself.

After imbibing a steaming beaker, according to the much quoted legend, the pope exclaimed, “Why, this Satan’s drink is so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it! We shall fool Satan by baptizing it, and making it a truly Christian beverage.” This he did, and added the Church’s seal of approval to the waxing popularity of the harmless and invigorating decoction. Coffee was introduced into Venice in 1615.

The drink was brought to England by Canopios, a Cretan student at Oxford, in 1637. A Dutch merchant offered beans from Mocha at public sale in Amsterdam in 1640, although the drink was introduced into Holland as early as 1616. Coffee came to France in 1644. In 1645, the first coffee house was opened in Venice.

The First London Coffee House

A Jew named Jacobs opened the first coffee house in England, at Oxford, in 1650. The first coffee house in London was opened by Pasqua Rosee, a Greek youth, body servant to Daniel Edwards, a London merchant who brought the boy back from Smyrna with him. When in the Levant, Mr. Edwards had acquired the coffee habit. In London, Pasqua was wont to prepare the beverage for his master daily. The novelty of the drink caused the Edwards house to be overrun with company, and Edwards, in self-defense, set the youth up in a shed or tent in St. Michaels Alley, Cornhill, opposite the church. Here, in the same year, Pasqua Rosee issued the first advertisement for coffee in English. It was in the form of a handbill acclaiming “The Vertue of the Coffee Drink.” After leaving England, Pasqua Rosee went to Holland and opened a coffee house there.

First Newspaper Advertisement for Coffee

The first newspaper advertisement for coffee appeared in the Publick Adviser, London, May 19, 1657. It was as follows:

First Advertisement for Coffee (1652)

Handbill used by Pasqua, who opened the first coffee house
in London. (Reproduced from the original in the British Museum.)

In Bartholomew Lane on the back side of the Old Exchange, the drink called Coffee (which is a very wholesome and Physical drink, having many excellent vertues), closes the Orifice of the Stomach, fortifies the heat within, helpeth Digestion, quickneth the Spirits, maketh the heart lightsom, is good against Eye-sores, Coughs, or Colds, Rhumes, Consumptions, Head-ach, Dropsie, Gout, Scurvey, Kings Evil, and many others is to be sold both in the morning and at three of the clock in the afternoon.

Meanwhile, in 1656, coffee was subjected to further persecution in Constantinople, where the grand vizier Kuprili, for political reasons, suppressed the coffee houses and prohibited the use of coffee. For the first violation the punishment inflicted was cudgeling; for the second offense the offender was sewed in a leather bag and thrown into the Bosporous.

Despite the severe penalties staring them in the face, violations of the law were plentiful among the people of Constantinople. Venders of the beverage appeared in the market places with “large copper vessels with fire under them; and those who had a mind to drink were invited to step into any neighboring shop where every one was welcome on such an account.”

Later, Kuprili, having assured himself that the coffee houses were no longer a menace to his policies, permitted the free use of the beverage that he had previously forbidden.

At this time to refuse or to neglect to give coffee to their wives was a legitimate cause for divorce among the Turks. The men made promise when marrying never to let their wives be without coffee. “That,” says Fulbert de Monteith, “is perhaps more prudent than to swear fidelity.”

In 1657, coffee appeared in Paris, but it was not served publicly until introduced by Soliman Aga, the Turkish ambassador, in 1669. He made it in Turkish style, had it served by black slaves, “on bended knees, in tiny cups of egg-shell porcelain, and poured out in saucers of gold and silver, placed on embroidered silk doylies, fringed with gold bullion.” Naturally, his sumptuous coffee functions became the rage of Paris.

The coffee drink came to North America in 1668. It was first sold in Boston in 1670.

Opposition to London Coffee Houses

Coffee and the coffee houses were fiercely attacked by publicans and ale-house keepers in London between the Restoration and 1675. A series of broadsides and tracts were launched against them. They bore such titles as, “A cup of coffee: or coffee in its colours,” “A Broadside against coffee, or the marriage of the Turk,” and “The Women’s petition against coffee,” the latter presenting the argument that coffee made men as “unfruitful as the deserts whence that unhappy berry is said to be brought.”

These were ably answered by coffee’s defenders, and the drink continued to find favor in spite of its detractors.

Early Parisian Coffee Houses

The beverage was introduced into Germany in 1670, and the next year the first coffee house in France was opened in Marseilles. Pascal, an Armenian, opened the first coffee house in Paris, at the Fair of St. Germain, in 1672. The progenitor of the real French café was the Procope, opened in Paris in 1689 by Francois Procope, a lemonade vender of Florence.

The coffee house spread rapidly in France. In the reign of Louis XV, there were over 600 cafés in Paris. These became famous: Tour d’Argent, the Royal Drummer, Café Foy, Régence, Momus, Café de Paris, Voisins, Café de la Paix, and Tortoni. At the close of the 18th century there were over 800 cafés in Paris; in 1843, there were over 3,000. They played an important part in the French Revolution, in the development of French literature and of the stage. Among the notables that frequented them were Voltaire, Rousseau, Fontenelle, Beaumarchais, Diderot, Desmoulins, Napoleon, Marie Antoinette, de Musset, Victor Hugo, Gautier, Talleyrand, Marat, Robespierre, Danton, and Rossini.

While it is recorded that coffee made slow progress with the court of Louis XIV, the next king, Louis XV, to please his mistress du Barry, gave it a tremendous vogue. It is related that he spent $15,000 a year for coffee for his daughters.

Coffee Houses Suppressed

In 1675, Charles II of England issued a proclamation to close all London coffee houses as places of sedition. By that time there were hundreds of them, and they were known as penny universities. The king’s proclamation was so unpopular in nearly all quarters that it stands today as one of the worst political blunders in history. Upon petition of the coffee traders, the order was revoked eleven days after issue.

Some Famous Coffee Houses

The London coffee houses of the 17th and 18th centuries were centers of wit and learning. They were referred to as the “penny universities” because they were great schools of conversation, and the entrance fee was only a penny. Twopence was the usual price of a dish of coffee or tea, this charge also covering newspapers and lights. Quoting a poem of the period:

By 1715, there were 2,000 coffee houses in London. Every profession, trade, class, and party had its coffee house. Men had their coffee houses as now they have their clubs; sometimes contented with one, sometimes belonging to three or four. Johnson, for instance, was connected with St. James’s, the Turk’s Head, the Bedford, Peele’s, besides the taverns which he frequented. Addison and Steele used Button’s; Swift, Button’s, the Smyrna, and St. James’s; Dryden, Will’s; Pope, Will’s and Button’s; Goldsmith, the St. James’s and the Chapter; Fielding, the Bedford; Hogarth, the Bedford and Slaughter’s; Sheridan, the Piazza; Thurlow, Nando’s.

Among the famous English coffee houses of the 17th-18th century period were St. James’s, Will’s, Garraway’s, White’s, Slaughter’s, the Grecian, Button’s, Lloyd’s, Tom’s, and Don Saltero’s.

St. James’s was a Whig house frequented by members of Parliament, with a fair sprinkling of literary stars. Garraway’s catered to the gentry of the period, many of whom naturally had Tory proclivities.

One of the notable coffee houses of Queen Anne’s reign was Button’s. Here Addison could be found almost every afternoon and evening, along with Steele, Davenant, Carey, Philips, and other kindred minds. Pope was a member of the same coffee house club for a year, but his inborn irascibility eventually led him to drop out of it.

At Button’s, a lion’s head, designed by Hogarth after the Lion of Venice, “a proper emblem of knowledge and action, being all head and paws,” was set up to receive letters and papers for the Guardian. The Tatler and the Spectator were born in the coffee house, and probably English prose would never have received the impetus given it by the essays of Addison and Steele had it not been for coffee-house associations.

Pope’s famous Rape of the Lock grew out of coffee-house gossip. The poem itself contains one charming passage on coffee:

Another frequenter of the coffee houses of London, when he had the money to do so, was Daniel Defoe, whose Robinson Crusoe was the precursor of the English novel. Henry Fielding, one of the greatest of all English novelists, loved the life of the more bohemian coffee houses, and was, in fact, induced to write his first great novel, Joseph Andrews, through coffee-house criticisms of Richardson’s Pamela.

Other frequenters of the coffee houses of the period were Thomas Gray and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Garrick was often to be seen at Tom’s in Birchin Lane, where also Chatterton might have been found on many an evening before his untimely death.

The second half of the 18th century was covered by the reigns of the Georges. The coffee houses were still an important factor in London life, but were influenced somewhat by the development of gardens in which were served tea, chocolate, and other drinks, as well as coffee. At the coffee houses themselves, while coffee remained the favorite beverage, the proprietors, in the hope of increasing their patronage, began to serve wine, ale, and other liquors. This seems to have been the first step toward the decay of the coffee house.

The coffee houses, however, continued to be the centers of intellectual life. When Samuel Johnson and David Garrick came together to London, literature was temporarily in a bad way, and the hack writers dwelt in Grub Street.

It was not until after Johnson had met with some success, and had established the first of his coffee-house clubs at the Turk’s Head, that literature again became a fashionable profession.

This really famous literary club met at the Turk’s Head from 1763 to 1783. Among the most notable members were Johnson, the arbiter of English prose; Oliver Goldsmith; Boswell, the biographer; Burke, the orator; Garrick, the actor; and Sir Joshua Reynolds, the painter. Among the later members were Gibbon, the historian, and Adam Smith, the political economist.

Certain it is that during the sway of the English coffee house, and at least partly through its influence, England produced a better prose literature, as embodied alike in her essays, literary criticisms, and novels, than she ever had produced before.

The advent of the pleasure garden brought coffee out into the open in England; and one of the reasons why gardens, such as Ranelagh and Vauxhall, began to be more frequented than the coffee houses was that they were popular resorts for women as well as for men. All kinds of beverages were served in them, and soon the women began to favor tea as an afternoon drink. At least, the great development in the use of tea dates from this period, and many of these resorts called themselves tea gardens.

After the Turks failed in their attack on Vienna in 1683, Kolschitzky, a hero of the siege, was given the supplies of green coffee which they left in their flight, and with them he opened the first coffee house in Vienna.

Early Coffee Propagation

In 1696 and again in 1699, the Dutch introduced the propagation of coffee into Java. The same year the first coffee house (the King’s Arms) was opened in New York.

“Java” coffee seeds were received at the Amsterdam Botanical Gardens in 1706, and in 1714 a plant raised from them was presented to Louis XIV and by him nurtured in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris. It was a seedling of this plant that Captain Gabriel De Clieu carried to Martinique in 1723, sharing his drinking water with it on a long voyage.

In 1715, coffee cultivation was first introduced into Haiti and Santo Domingo. Later came hardier plants from Martinique. In 1715-17, the French Company of the Indies introduced the cultivation of the plant into the isle of Bourbon (now Réunion) by a ship captain named Dufougeret-Grenier from St. Malo. It did so well that nine years later the island began to export coffee.

The Dutch brought the cultivation of coffee to Surinam in 1718. The first coffee plantation in Brazil was started at Pará in 1723 with plants brought from French Guiana, but it was not a success. The English brought the plant to Jamaica in 1730. In 1740, Spanish missionaries introduced coffee cultivation into the Philippines from Java. In 1748, Don José Antonio Gelabert introduced coffee into Cuba, bringing the seed from Santo Domingo. In 1750, the Dutch extended the cultivation of the plant to the Celebes. Coffee was introduced into Guatemala about 1750-60. The intensive cultivation in Brazil dates from the efforts begun in the Portuguese colonies in Pará and Amazonas in 1752. Porto Rico began the cultivation of coffee about 1755. In 1760, João Alberto Castello Branco brought to Rio de Janeiro a coffee tree from Goa, Portuguese India. The news spread that the soil and climate of Brazil were particularly adapted to the cultivation of coffee. Molke, a Belgian monk, presented some seeds to the Capuchin monastery at Rio in 1774. Later, the bishop of Rio, Joachim Bruno, became a patron of the plant and encouraged its propagation in Rio, Minas, Espirito Santo, and São Paulo. The Spanish voyager, Don Francisco Xavier Navarro, is credited with the introduction of coffee into Costa Rica from Cuba in 1779. In Venezuela, the industry was started near Caracas by a priest, José Antonio Mohedano, with seed brought from Martinique in 1784.

Coffee cultivation in Mexico began in 1790, the seed being brought from the West Indies. In 1817, Don Juan Antonio Gomez instituted intensive cultivation in the state of Vera Cruz. In 1825 the cultivation of the plant was begun in the Hawaiian Islands with seeds from Rio de Janeiro. The English began to cultivate coffee in India in 1840. In 1852, coffee cultivation was begun in Salvador with plants brought from Cuba. In 1878, the English began the propagation of coffee in British Central Africa, but it was not until 1901 that coffee cultivation was introduced into British East Africa from Réunion. In 1887, the French introduced the plant into Tonkin, Indo-China.

Frederick, the Great Beer Drinker

Germany also had its attempts at coffee suppression. Frederick the Great, of Prussia, had a violent scorn for any beverage so innocuous as coffee—until he found in its increasing popularity, despite his tirades and ukases against it, a comfortable source of revenue to the crown.

Following is the text of Frederick’s celebrated Coffee and Beer Manifesto issued September 13, 1777, a curiosity:

It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects and the amount of money that goes out of the country in consequence. Everybody is using coffee. If possible, this must be prevented. My people must drink beer. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were his ancestors and his officers. 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 to endure hardship or to beat his enemies in case of the occurrence of another war.

Later, in 1781, Frederick established state coffee-roasting plants and made the coffee business a government monopoly. The common people were forbidden to roast their own coffee. “Coffee smellers” were employed to seek out violations of the law. In 1784, Maximilian Frederick, elector of Cologne, prohibited the use of coffee except by the well-to-do. The decree failed of its purpose.

Holland early adopted the coffee house, and the Dutch were the pioneer coffee traders. History records no intolerance of coffee in Holland.

If Vienna helped make coffee famous, London and Paris gave us the last word in coffee houses. The two most picturesque chapters in the history of coffee have to do with the period of the old London and Paris coffee houses of the 17th and 18th centuries. Much of the poetry and romance of coffee centers around this time. The London coffee house was, however, a male institution; indeed, out of it came the solid British club. The Parisian coffee house, on the other hand, was, like everything French, distinctly Gallic. Women were welcome, and it is not to be wondered that the French adaptation of the oriental coffee house became in time a much more esthetic and artistic institution,—the unique French café.

Early American Coffee Houses

The early history of coffee in the United States centers around the coffee houses of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. These were patterned largely after the English prototype. Gradually they became taverns, and not infrequently evolved into hotels. In Colonial days, Americans were also large consumers of tea, and, indeed, were in a fair way to become a nation of tea drinkers, when King George III perpetrated that fatal blunder known as the Stamp Act. The Boston Tea Party of 1773 cast the die for coffee. It became a patriotic duty to drink something else, and coffee didn’t have to come from England. Thus was started a national habit which made coffee our national drink. So, when the coffee house disappeared, the coffee drink was found to be strongly intrenched in the homes of the people, and it has stayed there ever since,—“King of the American breakfast table.”

In Boston, the London, Crown, and the Gutteridge were the best known early coffee houses. Later came the King’s Head, Indian Queen, and Green Dragon. The Exchange Coffee House, erected in 1808, was a seven-story skyscraper, and was probably the largest and most costly commercial coffee house ever built. It was a center of marine intelligence, like Lloyd’s of London.

The burghers of New Amsterdam began to substitute coffee for “must,” or beer, in 1668. In 1683, the year following William Penn’s settlement on the Delaware, we find him buying supplies of coffee in the New York market, and paying for them at the rate of 18 shillings and 9 pence (about $4.68) a pound.

The King’s Arms (1696) was the first coffee house in New York. It was followed by the historic Merchants Coffee house (sometimes called “the birthplace of our Union”), the Exchange, Whitehall, Burns, and Tontine houses.

The coffee houses of early Philadelphia loom large in the history of the city and the republic. Picturesque in themselves, with their distinctive colonial architecture, their associations were also romantic. Many a civic, sociological, and industrial reform came into existence in the low-ceilinged, sanded-floor main rooms of the city’s early coffee houses. One of those reforms was the ultimate abandonment of the public slave auctions which were held regularly on a platform in the street before the second London coffee house, kept by William Bradford, the printer.

There is this to be remarked in closing this brief sketch of the early history of coffee: In Europe and in America the houses where the coffee drink was first served became forums of democracy and temples of free speech. Wherever introduced, coffee has spelled revolution. It ushered in the Commonwealth in England, it was first aid to the French Revolution, and it undoubtedly helped make the American republic.