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Not many beverages today have such widespread popularity as coffee. Perhaps the greatest source of caffeine short of the new energy products being developed, coffee is definitely widespread in many different locations, from the home to the office, from small cafes to trendy eating places.

The history of coffee can be traced for a little more than a thousand years, a somewhat short period of time when compared with alcoholic beverages, which have been consumed since prehistory, and tea, which starts back more than a thousand years BC. Not surprisingly, coffee has spread throughout the world as a popular beverage. A review of the history of coffee will show the way it has acquired its recognition.

Ethiopian Beginnings

A history of coffee as a beverage started in Ethiopia some time during the ninth century. Legend has it that Ethiopian herders realized that their goats became particularly perky after consuming the berries from a particular shrub, and therefore got the idea to use it as a stimulant. The truth is that coffee probably had already been produced as a beverage by the ninth century as a normal consequence of cultivation of vegetation. From Ethiopia, the beverage spread to North Africa, including Egypt.

Popularity In The Middle East

The introduction of coffee to Egypt made it accessible to ports with trade to all of the Middle East, where coffee became a popular drink by the 1500s. Shortly after its introduction, respective authorities put a ban on the drink because of its stimulant attributes. However, much like prohibition in the United States, the ban on coffee did not survive and was eventually rescinded. At this point in history, though, tight regulations on the product were set up. Although coffee in its roasted form started to be exported to Italy and other European nations, export of the unroasted coffee beans and plants was banned.

Colonization And Coffee

This restrictive control over the export of coffee plants could not last. This particular period in the history of coffee concluded when Dutch merchants smuggled coffee seeds from the Middle East during the 1600s, where they were planted on the island of Java, which is still a significant exporter of coffee these days and also shares its name with the nickname for the drink. Curiously, as coffee plants spread to other European colonies, another century in the history of coffee, in the eighteenth century, the plants were smuggled to Brazil, which happens to be still the largest exporter of coffee beans.

Coffee in the US

The history of coffee in US follows that of early conflicts. Brought in there in the 1700s, coffee’s popularity didn’t take off prior to the Revolutionary War, when tea became scarce and the colonists looked to other beverages. The drink again increased in acceptance through the war of 1812 for the same reasons.

But the period when coffee consuming evolved to where it became an American fixture seems to be during the Civil War, when demand was sufficient so it became cemented as a drink in a great many American households. Through colonization and wars, the history of coffee generally seems to conform with that of the history of people, and its wide-spread recognition throughout the world illustrates that it is truly a global experience.

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