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