History Matters Friday, March 3, 2023
Coffee- the Bean of Good & Evil
THE CARAFE of CIVILIZATION
Ethiopia is a land of 80 different ethnic groups, 90 different languages, and three major world religions. This variety of colorful cultures weaves many different beautiful tapestries of a story. Myth and culture are always richer and more robust than the “factual”. Regardless of one’s ability to determine veracity, the myths of coffee are nothing less than, well…stirring. With that in mind, we turn to an Ethiopian river and the fertile green hills of Kaffa, from which we get the name for coffee. It is a perfect beginning that humanity and coffee are born together in this place. The history of the world is found in a cup of coffee. (1)
THE VINE OF ISRAEL
In I Kings 10:31, the Queen of Sheba visits King Solomon, King of Israel. Legend has it that she returned home to Ethiopia and bore his son, Menelik I, the beginning of the Ethiopian dynasty, which was at first Jewish. This illegitimate legacy “legitimized” the Menelik dynasty as the royal descendants of King David. And Ethiopia becomes a “New Jerusalem”, a holy place where heaven had planted itself into African soil. The fruit of their Abyssinian tree of life was the coffee bean. This myth generated enormous religious, social, political and financial validity to the Ethiopian dynasty of Menelik.
THE GOSPEL SEED OF COFFEE
The Queen of Sheba is not the only Ethiopian ancestor with religious connections to the seed of Abraham. The Ethiopian eunuch in the Bible was the first recorded royalty to follow Jesus. Saint George is of Ethiopian heritage and was the military commander under the Roman emperor Diocletian who suffered martyrdom for converting his battalion to Christianity. Saint George is the national patron saint of Ethiopia. Emperor Constantine proclaimed Christianity the legal religion for the Holy Roman Empire; and Ethiopia was the second province to nationally “convert” to Christianity (345 AD). Ethiopia remains the oldest and only Christian nation in the world that has never been conquered or colonized. She remains predominantly Christian until 1979. And all of this sets the stage for the 9th century Arabic shepherd, Kaldi, who noticed his goats “shaking and dancing” after eating the berries of a shrub. Kaldi shared these musings with the abbot of a local Christian monastery who made a drink from boiling the berries (coffee beans). The monks do night vigils and long hours of prayer; and it is said they drank the local drink to keep them awake for prayer.
THE WINE OF ARABY
Our first written record of coffee comes from the 15th century when an Islamic Sufi mystic traveling through parts of Ethiopia and Yemen comes across the blessed bean. It is a sober intoxication. In fact, coffee comes to be associated with Muhammad’s birthday. Legend has it that the Archangel Gabriel brought coffee to mankind to replace alcohol. Arabs who invented brewing, roast the coffee and then brewed it, making it even stronger as a therapeutic drink.
After Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks (1453) and more world trade routes developed in the 15th and 16th centuries, coffee found its way across Egypt, Persia, Syria, Turkey and into the Arabian peninsula becoming a daily part of the table in Arabic culture. The first coffee shop in Constantinople was for men only and opened in 1457 called Kiva Han. Coffee was called the “wine of Araby” and coffee houses called qahveh khaneh were social gatherings for men to talk about life and ideas. The coffee houses were called “schools of the wise” where pilgrims all over the region traveling on pilgrimage to Mecca would stop for coffee and conversation. Muslims used coffee to stay awake for prayers and suppress appetite during fasting. Women were not completely left out. Turkish law gave a women license to divorce her husband if she was denied her daily coffee!
While stories vary, these two things were firmly grounded: 1) the origins of coffee are found in Ethiopia and Yemen and 2) both African Christianity and Middle Eastern Islam found stories to support the idea that Allah-God had given coffee to humanity for prayer, fasting, and wise conversation—for his and her betterment and pleasure.
While socially very popular, religious concerns arose about coffee because it, like another stimulant called kat, were viewed by religious leaders, perhaps like marijuana in our culture today. Coffee had a dark side. While some Sufi mystics would still use it during prayers; in 1511, an Islamic cleric named Khair Beg, banned its use in Mecca. It may have been due to it’s stimulant “drug” effect, or it may have been due to coffee houses where radicals would “inebriate” the people with western ideas of infidels. Beg was executed by command of the Sultan. The Sultan proclaimed coffee as sacred, issuing a fatwa in 1524.
Ambivalence continued. Again in the 17th century, Sultan Murad IV, ruler of the Ottoman Empire, made the consumption of coffee a capital offense along with tobacco and alcohol. He would disguise himself as a commoner and stalk the streets of Istanbul with a 100 pound broadsword. Unfortunate coffee drinkers were decapitated on the spot.
THE CATHOLIC CONVERSION of COFFEE
Coffee was not popular in Europe until the 16th century. The Knights of St. John (1565) imprisoned Turkish Muslim slaves at the Great Siege of Malta and were known to have remarked ‘Turks most skillful makers of this concoction.” Venice was the trade gateway from the East to the European West. In 1615, local Christian clergy condemned the popular rise in coffee among the people, referring to coffee as the antithesis of communion wine. It was the “devil’s drink” either due to its association with Muslims, it’s stimulant drug effect, or it’s association with liberal rebellious conversation. Such a social problem it had become that they asked Pope Clement VIII (1592- 1605) to intervene.
Pope Clement VIII had an unlimited capacity to work and was the first pope to try coffee (whether these two were connected is unknown). He is to have said “Why this Satan’s drink is so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it.” He also believed that by “baptizing this brew”; it might replace alcohol among the masses.
While Clement VIII goes down in history as “The Coffee Pope”; he was indefatigable in his rigor for relentless diplomacy. He absolved Henry IV (of France) thus putting an end to the Thirty Years War in France. He delicately negotiated an ugly debate between the Dominicans and the Jesuits on the theological argument of free will vs grace. He developed an alliance of Christian European nations against the Ottoman Empire known as “The Long War”. After many years of “new” scholarship on the textual criticism of the Latin Bible called the Vulgate; in 1592, he commissioned a “new” official Bible of the Catholic Church, also called the “Clementine Vulgate.” Clement VIII forbade any further changes indicating the increasing power he had obtained, including at times a ruthless absolutism. The “Clementine Vulgate” was the official Catholic Bible up until 1979. It was likely his unwavering certainty that helped “canonize”coffee. From villainous to virtuous, Pope Clement VIII laid the foundation for “coffee hour” after communion.
Coffee was even banned for a period of time in the 1700’s in Ethiopia by the Ethiopian Orthodox church which had followed the same pattern as Roman Catholicism for much of the same reasons. Coffee had been banned by previous Catholic hierarchy and Islamic imams. The drinking of coffee was not sanctioned as appropriate for Ethiopian Orthodox Christians until the Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II ruled (1889-1903). “Bunn” is the name for coffee in an Ethiopian dialect. Bunn is also the number one selling brand of American coffee pots. By serendipity, the Bunn corporation is not named after the Ethiopian word for coffee but after its CEO, Arthur H. Bunn!
THE EUROPEAN CAFE
Coffee houses began in 560 AD with over 300 in Turkey. Over a millennia later, Italy (1645) and England (1652) followed suit. By the 17th century in London, there were over 300 coffee houses in London. Lloyd’s of London started as a coffee house. For the price of a penny, you could get a cup of coffee and a conversation. The coffee house was called a “penny university”. Coffee houses In France (1672) were called cafes. (from where we get the word cafeteria). A Ukranian-Pole added sugar and milk for the first time. The Arab coffee house became the European cafe. Coffee sobered up Western civilization. Unfortunately, this drink which had been converted to a virtuous beverage was watered down with the sweat of African men and embittered with the bodies of slaves.
THE COLONIZATION OF COFFEE
In 1767, the French colonized the island of Hispanola. Here, in what would later be called Haiti, came more than 50% of the world’s trade in coffee. These coffee “cherries” were planted with the blood of enslaved black men. By the end of the 18th century, coffee was the world’s most profitable export. Apart from crude oil, coffee remains the most sought out commodity in the world today. This exploitation of African slaves led to the only successful slave rebellion in history. The coffee caused their chains, and it called for their freedom.
The Dutch (1602-1949) along with the British colonized parts of Indonesia. The Dutch, under the banner of the mega corporation, Dutch East India Company, were the first Europeans to grow coffee with their efforts on the island of Java. Java, is another name for coffee. Later, the Dutch expanded to the islands of Sumatra. The disruption in the global supply chain from Haitian wars gave the Dutch an opportunity to capture a market share of the global coffee trade. Other European powers looked to Brazil, Columbia, and Central America. Brazil continued the use of African slaves until 1888; and Central Americans used disadvantaged Indigenous Peoples. Coffee become a liquid flag of colonization, exploitation, slavery, and a forerunner of modern day global corporations of capitalism.
In the genesis of American colonization, Captain John Smith in the settlement at Jamestown, Virginia; brought coffee beans with him from England—the first coffee “to go”. Among the American colonies still under British rule, the heavy tax placed on tea by King George III (1773) and the subsequent Boston tea party gave coffee a huge economic and social push. “By George”, the American colonies exchanged tea for coffee. Thomas Jefferson writes “Coffee is the favorite drink of the civilized world.” And John Adams, writing to his wife Abigail, proclaims his love for tea but says he will have to learn to embrace coffee instead because drinking tea had become unpatriotic. The American Revolution was planned in a coffee house called The Green Dragon. The American Revolution inspired the French Revolution which was also planned in a coffee house, building its reputation as the seed for rebellion and insurrection.
I TAKE MY COFFEE “BACH”
Coffee had evolved from a forbidden fruit to a staple of wealth and patriotism, and had spilled out and saturated European pop culture. This is seen richly in Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Coffee Cantata” which itself was composed in a coffee house. In this cantata, a rebellious young woman pleads with her father to accept her devotion to drinking coffee. She says “No suitor is to come to my house unless he promises me and it is written in the marriage contract that I will be permitted to make myself coffee whenever I want.”
So popular had coffee become, that in 1777, Fredrick the Great of Prussia, ruled that beer should be drunk instead of coffee for fear that the economy would suffer if people drank less “German” beer.
A CUP OF JOE
Sailors used to be given a daily ration of rum. Legend has it that on June 1, 1914; Secretary of the Navy, Joe Daniels, implemented “general order 99” to prohibit alcohol on board a Navy vessel. It reads “ the strongest drink of any kind allowed on naval ships is coffee.” The sailors were expected to replace their daily rum ration with coffee. The sailors in sarcasm and spite started calling coffee “a cup of Joe.” “Joe” was a pejorative term for coffee.
A LATTE OF MEDICINE
At the vortex of the history of the global economic power structures— stirred by colonization, embittered by the African slave trade, stimulating revolutions, and leaving poorer countries emptied of their rich dark soil—- everything drips from drugs. Coffee, tea, cacao (cocaine), and tobacco —even raw simple sugar— caused the entire world to rise and fall in order to buy and sell the pleasure of a stimulant. Caffeine is the most widely used psycho-stimulant in the world. Coffee is the world’s primary source. Tea is second. Coffee was considered a “medicinal” for a “nervous disorder”: an excellent berry…to expel giddiness out of his head.” Coffee was wealth and health to those who controlled it; and poverty and death to those that were controlled by it.
THE BIOLOGY OF THE BEAN
Adenosine tri-phosphate (ATP) is the fuel of the human body. When it is being used, ATP is broken down into ADP. When excess adenosine builds up in the brain, the pituitary gland in the brain signals to the adrenal glands that there is an emergency to kick out more of the juices on top of the kidney (eg. epi- nephron). With epinephrine also called adrenaline, the heart speeds up, the pupils dilate, the brain becomes more alert, breathing is more intense, and the stomach shuts down to shunt blood to major organs. This is the “fight of flight” response.
Caffeine is “fake adenosine” and blocks the adenosine receptor so that an abundance of actual adenosine builds up and the body does its same pituitary-adrenal excitatory drill. When caffeine is metabolized by the liver, it becomes theophylline and theobromide, two old medicines used for asthma. Unfiltered coffee has cafestrol which raises seem cholesterol. Caffeine is used currently for apnea of prematurity in neonates, as a pain adjunct particularly with migraines; it is used in sports performance, and as an adjunct in ADD/ADHD. In the United States, 85% of adults consume it every day. Its primary effect for most people is to wake them up. Caffeine crosses the blood-brain barrier and peaks in about 15 minutes to 2 hours, and lasts for 2.5 -4.5 hours. Smokers metabolize it twice as quickly, and women on hormones metabolize twice as slowly.
Coffee has many more chemicals than just caffeine, including the ever popular phytochemicals. Extremely large studies have been done on coffee, and conclusions are that filtered coffee slightly increases risk of gallstones but does not raise cholesterol, is related with decreased rates of CAD, decreased rates of diabetes, decreased risk of kidney stones, decreased rates of depression, and no effect on cancer, blood pressure, or atrial fibrillation. Coffee is the perfect drink, the Joe of Eden, a bean of good and evil. You can see, smell, and taste world history in its cup.
REFERENCES
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