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The history of coffee: Ethiopia, Yemen, coffeehouses, colonialism

The coffee you drink this morning has a thousand-year journey behind it across continents, religions and empires. It began with wild bushes in the mountains of Ethiopia, passed through the Sufi monasteries of Yemen, where it became a drink, all the way to the colonial plantations that scattered it across the whole world. Along the way it gave birth to the first coffeehouses, fuelled trade and changed societies. This is a story not only of a plant, but of how one drink linked distant cultures and shaped history. In this post we will trace coffee’s path from the Ethiopian highlands, through Yemen and the Ottoman Empire, to Europe and the New World, and show how a bitter brew became one of the most important commodities in history.

Ethiopian roots and the Kaldi legend

The homeland of coffee is the highlands of Ethiopia, where wild bushes of Coffea arabica grow to this day. It is from there that the plant itself comes, although the drink in the form we know was born later, elsewhere. With Ethiopia is linked the famous legend of the goatherd Kaldi, who was said to notice that his goats became full of energy after eating the red fruit of a certain bush. It is worth knowing, however, that this is a later tale, written down only in the 17th century, and not an authentic historical record. Regardless of the legend, the Ethiopian origin of coffee is certain. It was there that the plant grew wild long before anyone began to cultivate and brew it. Ethiopia remains the genetic cradle of arabica and is famous to this day for the remarkable diversity of wild varieties, the foundation of the whole world of coffee.

Yemen - the birth of the drink

Although the plant comes from Ethiopia, it was in Yemen that coffee became a drink in today’s sense: cultivated, roasted and brewed. A key role here was played by Sufi Muslims in the 15th century, who drank the brew to keep alertness and focus during night prayers. The drink was named in Arabic qahwa, the same word used for wine. Its popularisation is attributed to holy men who valued its ability to sustain focus in prayer and study with less need for sleep. It was in Yemen that the culture of drinking coffee and the first methods of preparing it arose. It was there too that its cultivation on a larger scale began. Yemen, and especially the area around the port of Mocha, became the cradle of coffee as a drink and the first centre of its trade. It is the bridge between the wild bush and a global phenomenon.

The first coffeehouses

With the spread of coffee was born an institution that would transform city life: the coffeehouse. The first establishments arose in the world of Islam, often near religious and academic centres. In Cairo coffeehouses gathered around the famous Al-Azhar university. They appeared too in Syria, especially in cosmopolitan Aleppo, and then in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, around the middle of the 16th century. These coffeehouses quickly became something more than a place to drink the brew. They were a space for conversation, debate, games, music and the exchange of thought. They were sometimes called schools of the wise, because they gathered people hungry for discussion. It was precisely there that coffee began to play its great social role, as a drink that stimulated not only the body, but also the exchange of ideas. The coffeehouse became the heart of social and intellectual life.

Coffee in the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire played an enormous role in the spread of coffee. After reaching Istanbul the drink rapidly settled into Ottoman culture, becoming part of everyday, courtly and social life. A characteristic method of preparation arose, which we know to this day as Turkish coffee: finely ground beans boiled in a small pot. Coffee was so important that it wove itself into customs and ceremonies. Ottoman coffeehouses buzzed with life, although they were also sometimes seen by the authorities as potentially subversive places, where people gather and hold free conversations. Through Ottoman lands and the empire’s trade network coffee began to penetrate further, toward Europe. The empire was thus a key bridge through which the drink from the Arab world reached Western civilisation, carrying with it the whole culture of the coffeehouse.

The road to Europe

From the Middle East coffee reached Europe, first Italy, thanks to lively Mediterranean trade, and then the rest of the continent. At first it aroused mistrust as an exotic novelty from the Muslim world, but it quickly won hearts and palates. In European cities coffeehouses on the Eastern model began to arise, which immediately became centres of intellectual and social life. In England they were called penny universities, because for the price of a cup one could listen to the conversations of scholars and merchants. Some coffeehouses gave rise to trade and financial institutions. Coffee fuelled the age of Enlightenment, providing a space for debate and sober, stimulated thinking, in contrast to alcohol. The European fascination with coffee created enormous demand, which soon pushed the colonial powers to establish their own plantations.

Mocha and the Yemeni monopoly

For a long time Yemen had an almost complete monopoly on the coffee trade, and its export flowed mainly through the famous port of Mocha, from which mocha took its name. The Yemenis guarded their source of wealth: to prevent coffee being grown elsewhere, the exported beans were to be deprived of the ability to germinate, for example by scalding. The monopoly did not last forever, however. According to accounts, living seeds or seedlings were taken out of Yemen, which broke the exclusivity. Over time the plant reached India, and then the hands of the Dutch. This collapse of the Yemeni monopoly opened the way to a global expansion of cultivation. Once coffee ceased to be exclusively Yemeni, its history accelerated, because every power wanted its own source of the ever more precious bean. Mocha, however, remained a symbol of the first great centre of the coffee trade.

Colonialism and plantations

When Yemen’s monopoly cracked, the colonial powers began a race to grow coffee in their own possessions. The Dutch moved the plant to their colonies in the East Indies, establishing plantations on Java, whose name became practically a synonym for coffee. The French carried seedlings to the Caribbean, to Martinique, from where coffee spread across Latin America. These colonial plantations changed coffee from a rarity into a mass commodity, but their history also has a dark side: they often rested on forced and slave labour. Colonial expansion scattered coffee bushes across the tropical belt of the whole globe, creating the geography of cultivation we know to this day. It was in this era that coffee became one of the most important commodities of world trade, inseparably intertwined with the history of colonialism, exploitation and global exchange.

Brazil and the great expansion

The culmination of colonial expansion was Brazil, which over time became the largest producer of coffee in the world and remains so to this day. A favourable climate, vast areas of cultivable land and cheap labour allowed it to dominate the global market. Brazilian mass-scale production made coffee a drink available to ordinary people around the world, lowering its price from a luxury to an everyday item. At the same time this dominance meant that the prices and supply of coffee began to depend on the weather and harvests in one country, which we feel to this day. The rise of Brazil closed coffee’s great journey: from a wild bush in Ethiopia, through the Yemeni monopoly and colonial plantations, to a global commodity produced on an enormous scale. Coffee became an inseparable part of the everyday life of billions of people, and its geography took its final shape precisely then.

Coffee that changed societies

The history of coffee is not only a story of a plant, but of its influence on people and societies. Everywhere a coffeehouse appeared, a space of meeting, debate and the exchange of thought arose, different from the tavern with alcohol. Coffee, as a stimulating and sobering drink, favoured focus, work and discussion. Coffeehouses were sometimes cradles of intellectual movements, business interests, and even political ferment, which is why the authorities more than once looked at them with suspicion. The drink that began as an aid in the night prayers of the Sufis became fuel for the Enlightenment, trade and modern urban life. Its cultural role is hard to overstate. Coffee did not only travel through the world, but also changed it, creating institutions and customs that have survived to our times. It is a drink that literally fuelled history.

The legacy in the cup

Let us gather this whole journey in one brief overview:

The table shows how coffee travelled across continents. Every cup carries within it an echo of this long history. When you drink arabica, you reach for a plant from the Ethiopian highlands, whose drinking culture was created by Yemeni Sufis, which Ottoman coffeehouses spread, and which colonial plantations scattered across the world. The modern specialty movement, striving for fair trade and emphasising the origin of the bean, in a sense returns to the roots. We write more about where the differences between species come from in our post arabica versus robusta.

The key points in a nutshell

Coffee comes from the wild bushes of the Ethiopian highlands, but became a drink in Yemen, where Sufi Muslims drank qahwa for focus during night prayers. From there the coffeehouse culture spread through Cairo, Aleppo and Istanbul, and through the Ottoman Empire coffee reached Europe, where it fuelled intellectual life and trade. Yemen long guarded its monopoly through the port of Mocha, but the smuggling of seedlings opened the way to colonial plantations of the Dutch and French, and finally to the dominance of Brazil. The legend of the goatherd Kaldi is a later myth, not a historical record. Want to discover coffees of different origins and record your impressions? Keep notes in the GustoNote app. See also our posts on arabica versus robusta and African coffee.