The spread of Coffee around the World and the Culture of Cafe

At the time of the Great Geographical Discovery (late fifteenth and late seventeenth centuries), Europe or any other empire had no military superiority over the Ottoman Turks (who even besieged Vienna twice in 1529 and 1683). There is also no military violence to obtain coffee seedlings (such as defeating the Turkish army, occupying a place, looting local coffee trees and coffee berries). Faced with Turkey's strict control policy, neither legal import nor armed robbery, people had to try to "steal", thus deducing many interesting stories of coffee dissemination. In 1616, the Dutch smuggled a coffee sapling out of Mocha, Yemen, to escape Turkey's scrutiny. They sailed back home on a new route pioneered by the Portugal through the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and English Channel. However, the climate and soil in Europe are not suitable for the growth of tropical and subtropical plants, so the Dutch have to cultivate it as an experimental tree in a greenhouse. 1656 Dutch invasion of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). In 1603, the Dutch successfully planted coffee seedlings on Ceylon Island. In 1603, the Dutch established the first trading station-colonial settlement-on Java Island in Indonesia. In 1619, the Dutch occupied Jakarta and renamed it Batavia. In 1696, the Dutch brought coffee saplings and seeds from Malabar, on the southwest coast of India, and planted them in plantations in Batavia, Java, Indonesia. After a bit of twists and turns, it was finally successful and quickly profitable.

But the coffee forests of southwestern India were not introduced by Dutch or other Western Europeans, but by a local man named Baha Budan in the 1630s. As a devout Muslim, Baba Budan went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, the holy city of Islam. He returned with seven germinating coffee beans (seeds) clinging to his belly, evading Turkish inspection and successfully "stealing" back to his hometown in southwest India. Since then, coffee has taken root in South Asia.

To sum up, the Ethiopian people in East Africa discovered coffee, the Arab people cultivated coffee, the Chinese people promoted the transformation of coffee from a sacred drink to a popular drink, the Turkish people invented the most authentic and scientific drinking method of coffee, and the South Asian people also participated in the spread of coffee. It can be seen that coffee can become one of the three major drinks in the world, and African, Asian and European people have contributed to it. However, it is the European people who love coffee the most, develop the cafe (culture) the most prosperous, and spread coffee the farthest.

In 1615 Venetian merchants shipped imported coffee beans back to Venice to open coffee shops. It was probably the first coffee shop in Europe. However, the cafe owner uses imported Turkish coffee instead of coffee grown in Italy. In 1650, Oxford, England, the first coffee shop appeared, in 1652, London coffee shop appeared. In 1643, Paris opened its first café, and in 1650, Marseille opened its first café. In 1684 the first café appeared in Vienna. By the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century, cafes had mushroomed in Europe, especially in Western European cities.

From then on, the social life and customs of Europe (including later North America) increased the content of drinking coffee, and the streets increased the scenery of cafes. People relax, chat, watch simple artistic performances, talk about business, discuss the country, eat snacks, talk about love, coffee shops have become comparable to Chinese teahouses as a Western-style leisure place. Some literati, writers and artists conceived their own works while soaking in cafes; some politicians were active in cafes, some criminals planned crimes in cafes, and some brothels were also soliciting customers in cafes. Cafes became important social places for European and American people.

The development of European coffee habits and the popularity of coffee houses in turn stimulated the spread of coffee in order to save foreign exchange and not to be controlled by others. In 1714, a coffee tree was given to King Louis XIV as a generous gift by the Netherlands and was planted in the Jardin des Botanies in Paris and covered with greenhouses to survive. Naturally, coffee can only be cultivated for research purposes in Europe. The following year, the fruit of this tree was introduced by the French to Reunion, a small island east of Madagascar in East Africa. "Soon coffee was harvested there.

In 1723, a French officer De Clieu added a coffee plant from the Botanical Garden, kept it in a glass box (similar to a bonsai), and took it to the French colony of Martinique in the American Caribbean. He took care of it all the way, even dividing his own portion of fresh water to irrigate the coffee plant when fresh water was rationed. When he arrived, he planted saplings in his yard, surrounded by protective thorn bushes, and asked slaves to guard them day and night. This young tree thrived and was first harvested in 1726 (coffee grows three years after sowing). By 1777 Martinique had 18 million coffee trees. and spread throughout the Caribbean. In 1727, the Dutch and French had a territorial dispute in Guyana, and both sides asked Palhheta, an official of neutral Portuguese Brazil, to mediate. Pachta agreed to mediate, but demanded a bag of green coffee beans as a reward; Holland and France agreed. The final mediation succeeded, but the two countries refused to accept raw coffee beans. Finally, Pachta had to appeal to the wife of the governor of Guyane française. The viceroy's wife sympathizes with and loves Pachta. So she hid coffee seeds in the flowers she gave him. Since then, coffee has been introduced into Brazil, which is now the world's largest coffee producer. The blockade and monopoly of the Turks were finally completely broken. The field cultivation of coffee gradually spread throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the world. The drinking habit of coffee gradually spread all over the world with the blowing of European wind and rain, and was introduced into the Far East. The Japanese came into contact with coffee (beverage) around the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. In 1793, a ship of 12 people from the Sendai region of Honshu, Japan, was caught in a storm and drifted northeast to the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. They were transported overland by the Russians to Petersburg, Russia, via Irkutsk. The Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire have shared a border since modern times. Coffee drinking is estimated to have spread to Russia in the second half of the 17th century. By the end of the 18th century Russian cafes and coffee drinking were common. The Japanese first encountered coffee in Russia. After this group of Japanese returned to China, one of them, named Genzawa Ogata, wrote a travel book,"Different News around the Sea," in which coffee was mentioned and recorded as "Jiaxi." Later, Japan changed it to "Jia". [After Meiji Restoration, Japan took the initiative to accept European weather earlier than China. However, Japan's climate was not suitable for coffee trees to grow, so it was not until 1878 that coffee seedlings were introduced from India to Japan's Ogasawara Islands for trial cultivation. In the 1980s and 1990s, Japanese tea houses began to add coffee seats to provide coffee drinks, and independent cafes began to appear in large cities in Japan in the early 20th century.

With the advancement of modern technology, caffeine extracted from coffee berries today can be used as both a medical stimulant and an analeptic, and may also be abused to make low-end drugs for less affluent addicts. Therefore, the control of psychotropic drugs should be strengthened.