Have you ever noticed that coffee seems to be the center of a lot of controversy?  On one hand, you have the people who are always telling everyone they know that they shouldn’t drink too much coffee — it’s bad for you or it’s addicting.  On the other hand, you have people who will swear by it.  Their daily cup of coffee gives them energy and helps them get through the morning. These same people also point out the drink’s many health benefits.

Though it may seem like this is a thoroughly modern issue, coffee has been controversial for hundreds of years.  Coffee originally came from the Middle East, where it faced some opposition from the very beginning.  As early as 1511, coffee was actually banned in Yemen because it was a stimulant, which seemed to go against orthodox Islamic values.  Over time, however, coffee became an acceptable alternative in a culture where alcohol was forbidden.

Coffee came to Europe during the 16th century through trade with the East.  At first coffee was opposed by many, especially some Catholics, who believed it to be created by the devil.  The Pope himself gave his approval of the drink in 1600, however, and by the mid-17th century, coffee was becoming quite popular.  Coffee houses, which had become popular in the Middle East in the previous century, opened for the first time in Europe in 1645.

It was around this time that the Dutch started building their own coffee trade.  Up until then, coffee had to be imported from the East, which was expensive and difficult.  During the mid-17th century, however, the Dutch started growing coffee plants in one of their colonies.  They even gave a coffee plant as a gift to the King of France in 1714, which ultimately brought the coffee trade to Central and South America via France’s colony of Martinique.

Around the same time as coffee was becoming popular in Europe, it was also introduced in the Americas.  Most of the colonists preferred tea at that time.  Just before the Revolutionary War, however, tea started to become hard to get, since most of the colonists were boycotting it because of steep taxes.  After the Boston Tea Party in 1773, when a group of colonists disguised as Indians threw a shipment of tea overboard while the boat sat in the harbor, coffee became popular as an alternative for tea.

Although we can easily trace the path coffee has taken throughout the world, we still don’t know much about its origins.  Legend has it that coffee was discovered in the 9th century by a gatherer named Kaldi, whose goats were eating some strange red berries.  Kaldi noticed that his goats had a lot of energy, tried the berries himself, and found that they were the cause.  He brought the berries to a nearby monastery, but holy man threw the berries into the fire.  When they smelled the beans roasting, however, they supposedly retrieved them, ground them up, and put them in hot water.

Although this story is popularly told as the discovery of coffee, in fact it’s doubtful that it is true.  We don’t know exactly when coffee was discovered, but at the very least, it seems to have happened several hundred years later than this fanciful story.  Pretty much everything about this amazing drink seems to be the subject of debate, its origins included.

About the Author
Vern Marker is a writer of a variety of topics including the history of coffee. She is well-versed on coffee’s origins as well as the development of coffee accessories over the years

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