At the same time that Pope Clement VIII was enjoying his coffee in Venice, merchants in Arabia and Africa were enjoying a monopoly on coffee production, but all that was about to change, and it started with Baba Budan, an Asian Indian who cleverly brought fertile coffee beans to India despite export being strictly forbidden.
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For his endeavor, Baba Budan was made a saint.
- It’s the 1600s and Arabia and Muslim Africa continue to be the biggest coffee producers in the world with laws prohibiting fertile beans from being exported.
- Coffee beans first make it to India when an Indian pilgrim to Mecca manages to sneak a few coffee beans outside the city.
- Captain John Smith brings coffee to North America, which he familiarized himself with while travelling in Turkey, in 1607.
- In 1616 the Dutch people attempt to cultivate coffee in Holland with coffee beans that Dutchman, and trader, and smuggler Pieter Van Dan Broeck brings from Yemen. They fail, the plant refusing to grow in the cooler climate of Antwerp. Refusing to give up themselves, the Dutch take a different approach and establish the first European coffee estate in Sri Lanka years later.
- Coffee is brewed in England for the first time in 1637 by a Greek student who ends up being expelled afterwards, even with doing the British such a favor.
- In 1644 French ambassador Monsieur de la Roque brings coffee beans with him to Marseilles.
- Venice’s first coffee house opens its doors in 1645.
- In the 1650s the Oxford Coffee Club is established in England, later becoming the Royal Society.
- London’s first coffeehouse opens in 1652, and along with this first initiative comes the establishment of other similar houses all across the country.
- In 1668 coffee becomes the favorite breakfast beverage of New Yorkers, a place previously occupied by beer. Around the same time, on the other side of the ocean, tipping becomes a regular custom in English coffeehouses.
- In Marseilles, the first coffeehouse opens in 1671 to cater to merchants and travelers, only later to people of all social classes.
- Around 1675 comes another attempt to ban coffee from King Charles II whom also fears that coffee might make people insubordinate. The king has no choice but to lift the ban within only 11 days due to severe protests.
- The Dutch introduce Scandinavians to coffee in the 1680s and they quickly become avid consumers of the beverage.
- The first Viennese coffeehouse opens in 1683 to Franz Georg Kolschitzky who names it the Blue Bottle. He serves customers honey and cream-enriched coffee.
- Opening in 1686 is Paris’ Café de Procope, the first literary coffeehouse of the city that becomes a place of lively discussions for many famous figures of the time. Other establishments follow soon after. Café Procope is still in business today.
- Caffe Baum opens in Leipzig, Germany in 1694 and offers free coffee to customers. Popular figures that frequent the café include Wagner, Goethe and Bach.
- Two years later, The King’s Arms opens in New York, America’s first coffeehouse.