The Netherlands has a deep relationship with coffee and coffee culture

The Netherlands is reminiscent of flowers and cheese. in fact, the Netherlands has a deep relationship with coffee and is the first western country to get involved in coffee trade and cultivation. Coffee spread to Europe in the 17th century, causing controversy in Italy, England, France and Germany, and even banning drinking. However, the pragmatic Dutch saw huge business opportunities and accepted coffee without resistance. After careful layout and planning, the Netherlands became the first great power to successfully grow coffee in the colonies and earn a lot of gold by exporting "black gold" first. Subsequently, France also learned to follow the race to grow coffee, and the two sides competed.

As early as 1614, the Netherlands tried to establish direct coffee trade relations with Arab countries, but to no avail. In 1615, the merchant of Venice took the lead in importing the first batch of ripe coffee beans. It was not until ○-64 that the Netherlands successfully imported the first batch of ripe coffee beans from the Yemeni port of Mocha (when France and Germany were still coffee laymen), but the coffee trade did not meet the Dutch ambition to grow coffee in Sri Lanka and Java in Indonesia, because only self-sufficiency did not have to be subject to the Ottoman Empire.

In the early 17th century, Europe-especially the Dutch-coveted coffee, even illegally stealing or looting coffee saplings planted in Yemen by force. There is evidence that the Dutch did rob coffee saplings in Yemen many times and shipped them back to Amsterdam for trial. Unexpectedly, Europeans do not understand the habit of coffee trees withering when they are afraid of cold and frost, so they have not been able to cultivate successfully in cold Europe.

But their tuition fees were not paid by themselves, and in 1616, de Boek, captain of the Dutch East India Company, stole coffee trees from Mocha, Yemen, shipped them back to Amsterdam for preliminary research and planted them in a greenhouse. Under his careful care, it finally blossomed and became the mother plant of coffee trees in Europe.