England as a Coffee Drinking Nation
Many of us think of England as a tea drinking nation, but it was not always that way. To understand what I mean by that, let’s take a trip through the past.
Coffee was originally used in medicinal practice way back in the tenth century and it was mainly grown in Ethiopia, a convenient place for those living in Europe and the Middle East. The practice of roasting beans began in about the year 1200, and it was not until 1475 that the first ever coffee shop was opened in Constantinople (what we all know now as Istanbul), Turkey. The first English coffee house opened in 1652 by a servant of a Turkish merchant. The merchant and his Turkish business partners enjoyed coffee in their homeland and during their trips across the Ottoman Empire so they thought why not also enjoy the brew in London.
By 1708, the idea had caught on and there were more than 2,000 coffee houses all throughout London. Coffee was adopted and adored by the Europeans. It was seen as a healthy drink, one that stimulated creativity and endowed its drinkers with lasting energy. It was also safer to than the contaminated city water and was less likely to ruin your life than the oh so popular grain alcohols of the time.
Unfortunately, by the 1800s, things took a turn for the worst. In all the coffee fervor, English merchants had established coffee plantations in Sri Lanka, covering any piece of suitable land with coffee trees. The problem is that when you plant a large number of plants of the same species in one area (this practice is called monoculture), disease can spread rapidly. And so it did. A fungal parasite that probably came from Southern Ethiopia called coffee rust swept Sri Lanka. An area that was once exporting 100 million pounds of coffee per year was reduced to exporting only 5 million yearly, just because of one little parasite.
But to call it little is an understatement. Yes, fungi are microorganisms, but one rust pustule can produce 150,000 spores and each infected coffee tree leaf usually holds more than one pustule. It doesn’t matter the size of the parasite when it’s spore numbers are pushing the millions. The coffee trees had no chance.
But their demise was the tea tree’s rise. The dead coffee trees were uprooted and tea trees were planted in their stead, and suddenly England was obligately a tea drinking nation.
Sources
Suter, Keith. “The Rise and Fall of the English Coffee House.” Contemporary Review (n.d.): n. pag. Web.
“Why Europeans Drink Tea.” Coffee Rust. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 July 2016. <http://www.apsnet.org/publications/apsnetfeatures/Pages/ICPP98CoffeeRust.aspx>.
