The History of the Coffeehouse :: essays research papers

The first deep brownhouse the world had ever seen was founded in Constantinople, besides becoming Istanbul in 1475. It was such a huge success that right after it opened, two to a greater extent appeared. So began a fascination with coffee that would last 300 more years. The reason the first coffeehouse did not open in, say, England, was location. Since Turkey was only a quick sail away from the original brewer of coffee, Arabia, traders could get the coffee to the city with minimal effort. The Europeans were completely out of the coffee trading loop until coffee began to make its way into the hands of Venetian traders, leading the Italians to be the first Europeans to found coffeehouses. Slowly, coffeehouses came to open in England as well, the first opening in 1652. However, there was still the problem of transporting all that coffee from Turkey or the Middle East, a costly business. This problem was solved when the Turks, defeated in battle, left sacks upon sacks of the flavorf ul beans behind in parts of Europe. This created an abundance of coffee houses in Vienna, where there was large amounts of this left-behind coffee. Eventually, the storehouses began to run low on coffee, now very much in demand with the Europeans. You may be wondering, why didnt they just bring up some coffee? First of all, the merchants who sold the beans knew this, and sold the beans in non growing conditions (such as already ground up.) Secondly, people did try to grow coffee- scarce on European soil, the beans that were usable floundered and died. If they managed to get usable coffee beans at all, (it was illegal to get them) you wouldnt have nearly enough to support in time the smallest coffeehouse for a week. The Dutch trading companies knew all this, but they came up with a new, radical notion- why not get some beans, but grow them not in Europe but in the East Indies So the Dutch smuggled a small amount of un ground or process coffee beans out of the Arabian port of Moch a, then shipped them to Ceylon and the East Indies for cultivation. 30 years later, a French naval officer named Gabriel De Clieu sailed for the Caribbean island of Martinique. When he arrived, he happened to be carrying some un cultivated coffee beans. (Well never know how those got there.) He casually sold it to the locals, unwittingly starting one of the worlds largest coffee producers.