1In my presentation, I'm going to talk about coffee,
2and its importance both in economic and social terms.
3We think it was first drunk in the Arab world,
4but there's hardly any documentary evidence of it before the 1500s,
5although of course that doesn't mean that people didn't know about it before then.
6However, there is evidence that coffee was originally gathered from bushes
7growing wild in Ethiopia, in the northeast of Africa.
8In the early 16th century,
9it was being bought by traders,
10and gradually its use as a drink spread throughout the Middle East.
11It's also known that in 1522,
12in the Turkish city of Constantinople, which was the centre of the Ottoman Empire,
13the court physician approved its use as a medicine.
14By the mid-1500s, coffee bushes were being cultivated in the Yemen
15and for the next hundred years this region produced most of the coffee drunk in Africa and the Arab world.
16What's particularly interesting about coffee is its effect on social life.
17It was rarely drunk at home,
18but instead people went to coffee houses to drink it.
19These people, usually men, would meet to drink coffee and chat about issues of the day.
20But at the time, this chance to share ideas and opinions was seen as something that was potentially dangerous,
21and in 1623 the ruler of Constantinople demanded the destruction of all the coffee houses in the city,
22although after his death many new ones opened, and coffee consumption continued.
23In the seventeenth century, coffee drinking spread to Europe,
24and here too coffee shops became places where ordinary people, nearly always men, could meet to exchange ideas.
25Because of this, some people said that these places performed a similar function to universities.
26The opportunity they provided for people to meet together outside their own homes
27and to discuss the topics of the day had an enormous impact on social life,
28and many social movements and political developments had their origins in coffee house discussions.
29In the late 1600s, the Yemeni monopoly on coffee production broke down
30and coffee production started to spread around the world, helped by European colonization.
31Europeans set up coffee plantations in Indonesia and the Caribbean
32and production of coffee in the colonies skyrocketed.
33Different types of coffee were produced in different areas,
34and it's interesting that the names given to these different types,
35like Mocha or Java coffee,
36were often taken from the port they were shipped to Europe from.
37But if you look at the labour system in the different colonies,
38there were some significant differences.
39In Brazil and the various Caribbean colonies,
40coffee was grown in huge plantations
41and the workers there were almost all slaves.
42But this wasn't the same in all colonies;
43for example in Java, which had been colonized by the Dutch,
44the peasants grew coffee and passed a proportion of this on to the Dutch,
45so it was used as a means of taxation.
46But whatever system was used, under the European powers of the 18th century,
47coffee production was very closely linked to colonisation.
48Coffee was grown in ever-increasing quantities to satisfy the growing demand from Europe,
49and it became nearly as important as sugar production,
50which was grown under very similar conditions.
51However, coffee prices were not yet low enough for people to drink it regularly at home,
52so most coffee consumption still took place in public coffee houses
53and it still remained something of a luxury item.
54In Britain, however, a new drink was introduced from China,
55and started to become popular, gradually taking over from coffee,
56although at first it was so expensive that only the upper classes could afford it.
57This was tea,
58and by the late 1700s it was being widely drunk.
59However, when the USA gained independence from Britain in 1776,
60they identified this drink with Britain,
61and coffee remained the preferred drink in the USA, as it still is today.
62So, by the early 19th century, coffee was already being widely produced and consumed.
63But during this century, production boomed and coffee prices started to fall.
64This was partly because new types of transportation had been developed which were cheaper and more efficient.
65So now, working people could afford to buy coffee -
66it wasn't just a drink for the middle classes.
67And this was at a time when large parts of Europe were starting to work in industries.
68And sometimes this meant their work didn't stop when it got dark;
69they might have to continue throughout the night.
70So, the use of coffee as a stimulant became important -
71it wasn't just a drink people drank in the morning, for breakfast.
72There were also changes in cultivation...