Pod Insights You're Dead to Me History of Coffee (Radio Edit) About this episode Greg Jenner is joined by Professor Jonathan Morris and comedian Sophie Duker to learn all about the bittersweet history of coffee.
Coffee is undoubtedly one of the most popular drinks worldwide, and we consume an estimated 95 million cups of the stuff everyday in the UK alone. But where does coffee come from, and when did we start enjoying its caffeinated effects? From its origins in medieval Ethiopia and Yemen, through the coffeehouses of the Middle East and Europe, to its central importance to soldiers during the American Civil War, this episode traces the complex history of our favourite beverage. Along the way, it explores the uses people have had for coffee over the years, in religious rituals, as a stimulant to intellectual exchange, and even as a medicine. We also debunk some of the myths that have been brewed up about coffee’s history. Did the Pope really call it ‘the devil’s brew’? Was it discovered by an Ethiopian goatherd? And did a Dutch man really have to smuggle coffee trees out of Yemen? Listen to find out!
This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.
Hosted by: Greg Jenner
Research by: Matt Ryan
Written by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner
Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner
Audio Producer: Steve Hankey
Production Coordinator: Ben Hollands
Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse
Executive Editor: James Cook
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
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1:14 Greg Jenner? Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are grinding our beans, popping on the kettle and plunging our cafetiere as we learn all about the history of coffee. And to help us get caffeinated and educated, we've invited over two very special coffee guests. In history corner, he's a research professor in history at the University of Hertfordshire, where he's a historian of consumption, especially the history of coffee. Maybe you've read his book, Coffee: A Global History, or listened to his podcast series, A History of Coffee. It's Professor Jonathan Morris. Welcome, Jonathan. Thank you, Greg. Lovely to have you here. And in comedy corner, she's an award-winning comedian and writer. You will recognise her from loads of TV, including her glorious victory on Taskmaster.
1:58 Greg Jenner? Maybe you've seen her new stand-up show, But Daddy, I Love Her. It's fantastic. And of course, you'll remember her from our back catalogue, including recent episodes on naughty nun Benedetta Carlini and the legend of Atlantis. It's Sophie Juca. Welcome back for a sixth appearance, Sophie.
2:11 Speaker 05 Hey, I'm actually fuming because I heard that you tried to get Sabrina Carpenter for this episode.
2:17 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
2:17 Speaker 05 It was second choice.
2:18 Greg Jenner? Yeah, she was busy doing the Grammys or something.
2:21 Speaker 05 Yeah, I was busy watching the Grammys, so actually.
2:25 Greg Jenner? A key, important question here, I'm relying on you, do you drink coffee?
2:29 Speaker 05 I restrict my coffee intake because I like the smell of coffee.
2:33 Greg Jenner? Right.
2:34 Speaker 05 And I like it as a sort of cultural, a sort of a cultural concept. It makes me feel like I want to die, but I...
2:46 Greg Jenner? Perfect guest for the podcast.
2:47 Speaker 05 But I do, I am, I'm sort of like inoculising, that's not a word, I'm sort of building up my tolerance to coffee.
2:54 Greg Jenner? Okay.
2:54 Speaker 05 And sometimes, people don't know that it causes such a reaction in me, so if I'm feeling chaotic, I will occasionally order coffee. No one else knows that it's a big moment, but it is like, it's terrible. Having a coffee is really like opening a vortex into another reality for me.
3:08 Greg Jenner? I don't drink coffee at all, I don't know anything about coffee.
3:11 Speaker 05 Oh.
3:12 Greg Jenner? So Jonathan, I'm assuming you're a coffee drinker?
3:14 Speaker 06 I am a coffee drinker. I'm beginning to think it's also a murder weapon within the context of this studio.
3:20 Greg Jenner? All right, and you're gonna, you're gonna talk us through the history of coffee, so we're gonna learn plenty today, so what do you know?
3:31 Greg Jenner? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And whether you've got a crippling caffeine problem, whether you keep it decaf, whether like Sophie, it is a dangerous thing for you. Or if you're like me, you just can't stand the bitterness. You all know what coffee is. In terms of pop culture, coffee is just part of our life. Coffee shops crop up all over our favourite pop culture. You've got Central Perkin Friends, you've got Luke's Diner in Gilmore Girls, you've got Will Ferrell enjoying the best cup of coffee in the world in Elf. Giles from Buffy, featuring in the Sexy Ness Cafe adverts from the 90s. You've got Sabrina Carpenter, already mentioned by Sophie, the espresso summertime hit. And my personal fave would be Paul Rudd ranting in Role Models about the stupidly inconsistent name of all the different coffee sizes. "Venti means twenty", he shouts.
4:15 Greg Jenner? But what about the history of coffee? How did it become the world's favourite beverage? And what do goats have to do with it? Let's find out. Right, Professor Jonathan, there is a story, there is a sort of lovely myth that people like to talk about, that the first time people got hooked on caffeine in these wild coffee plants involved an animal. Sophie, do you wanna guess what the animal was and what the story was?
4:36 Speaker 05 Oh, do I get any clues on the animal?
4:38 Greg Jenner? Sure.
4:39 Speaker 05 Is it a big animal?
4:40 Greg Jenner? No, medium sized.
4:42 Speaker 05 Okay, I feel from context clues of being in this room earlier, you said goat?
4:46 Greg Jenner? I did say goats.
4:47 Speaker 05 And I feel it might have been a goat?
4:49 Greg Jenner? It is a goat, so tell me the story. Recount for me this fabled myth.
4:53 Speaker 05 Okay, so there's like a goat. There's just a guy, he's just a guy, but he's also a goat. And he lives on a farm. There's a farmer who's called Guy, he has a goat. And then he realises that his goat is acting like really unconventionally.
5:08 Greg Jenner? Mm hmm.
5:08 Speaker 05 It's an old goat, but he's acting more like a kid, you know?
5:11 Greg Jenner? Nice.
5:11 Speaker 05 He's got like, he's got a spring in his step.
5:14 Speaker 06 I think Sophie should be writing the origin myth. Definitely an improvement. The real origin myth, it's just real origin myth, it's not real. It's really about the goat herd, a guy called Caldi, and he sees his goats and they're dancing away.
5:27 Speaker 05 I said that.
5:28 Speaker 06 And he's thinking, what's going on? And he's seeing that they're eating these red berries and then they're starting to dance. Caldi thinks, hmm, red berries, let's see what I can do. Takes a few berries on himself, throws some very good moves, decides to take these back. Goes to the kind of scholar in his local village and the guy tries them, doesn't like them, throws them on the fire. Somehow or other.
5:51 Speaker 05 Okay.
5:52 Speaker 06 Smells that smell that you really liked and says, oh, we should take these, grind them down, make a coffee beverage with it. And that is the story.
6:00 Speaker 05 Yeah, wow.
6:01 Speaker 06 Of how coffee is formed.
6:02 Greg Jenner? Okay.
6:02 Speaker 05 Wow.
6:03 Speaker 06 It's an Ethiopian heritage, it's really from the sort of the southwest of Ethiopia.
6:07 Greg Jenner? That's our kind of mythic origins, but what about an actual historical reference, Jonathan? Have we got something that we can, we can say this is the first mention of coffee?
6:16 Speaker 06 I think what we can best say is we've got the first Arabic manuscript that mentions coffee, that we can definitively say mentions coffee. And that's written in about 1515, written by a guy with a very long name that ends in Al-Jazari. It concentrates and tells his version of the story of coffee. And in it, he highlights that another sort of Sufi mystic, a man called Al-Dubani.
6:40 Speaker 06 Said that the Sufis should bring over coffee to Yemen from Ethiopia.
6:45 Greg Jenner? Okay.
6:45 Speaker 06 To consume in place of cat, which was in short supply. Because this would enable them to sort of stay awake and go into their trance like state while they were carrying out their nightly devotions. So that seems to be the most viable option, as it were, for what we can say is the sort of the earliest clear use of coffee in that way. And what we can say is probably that the, obviously, the indigenous people in southwest Ethiopia, in Kaffa in particular, were probably using coffee for a variety of things, but foraging the coffee, not growing it.
7:19 Greg Jenner? Ethiopia to Yemen crosses across the straits and into Yemen, so we're into the Arab world. From Yemen, do we get it then spreading out through those sort of trade routes out through the Middle East?
7:28 Speaker 06 Yeah, essentially, coffee kind of circulates through the Middle East, up the Red Sea, that kind of diaspora, really the kind of sort of Islamic diaspora around there. The big next stage is, in a sense, at a certain point, the Yemenis start growing the coffee themselves.
7:42 Greg Jenner? Sure.
7:43 Speaker 06 And that's quite a big transformation. So what we can also definitively say is they are the first to cultivate coffee as opposed to forage coffee.
7:49 Greg Jenner? Gotcha. And so it spreads through trade routes. So you've got Mecca, Jeddah, Medina, Cairo, these big, big cities in the Islamic world. At what point do people go, but it tastes nice and I'm a Sufi mystic, but could I just drink it? When does it become a beverage?
8:03 Speaker 06 Yeah, so probably relatively quickly in the 1500s. So a big question here and why this is so important in Islam, is coffee intoxicating? Because if it is, you shouldn't be drinking it.
8:13 Greg Jenner? Right, okay.
8:14 Speaker 06 But if it is not intoxicating, then you could start drinking it. And if you could start drinking it, well, of course, then you're going to start socialising around it. And this moves into the creation of the coffee house, et cetera. So it begins to become at that point a social drink. It's used a lot by students, for example. What a change that might be with students in the 15th century.
8:33 Greg Jenner? How would that work?
8:34 Speaker 06 Yes, gosh.
8:35 Greg Jenner? And it's Suleiman the Magnificent. He closes down the coffee houses in Istanbul and Aleppo and Damascus. And yet somehow, as you say, the coffee house culture starts to thrive.
8:44 Speaker 06 The Ottomans basically sort of take over influence in the peninsula. We can kind of trace. The way that the coffee house moves up through Aleppo, Damascus, and eventually arrives into Istanbul. And Suleiman at first is very welcoming, and then 10 years later, he wants them all closed. The reason seems to be about, if you like, the fear of what might be going on in the coffee houses. The stated reasons are, you know, well, this is all a bit dubious. There might be things being consumed there that aren't actually coffee. They're things that he thinks or articulates are wrong with coffee houses. And then there's the underlying assumption that we have that is Suleiman a bit worried that people might be going around saying he's not so magnificent.
9:26 Greg Jenner? Oh, I see. Okay. How do you think the Pope, Pope Clement the Eighth, where do you think he stood on the moral question of coffee in the 1600s?
9:36 Speaker 05 I, I feel like maybe he was pro. Because I feel like coffee as a beverage is kind of like God's squad. It's very like, I think it gives you fervor. More diligent as well. And I think as like an alternative to maybe like alcohol. Maybe it's like a relatively new thing in Europe that could give people vim and vigour.
9:59 Speaker 06 So the story goes that they took him the coffee and he sort of sips it and says, this devil's drink's delicious. We've got to cheat the bevel. We're going to baptize it. We're going to make it a good Christian thing. Except he never did.
10:13 Speaker 05 He never did.
10:15 Greg Jenner? That's a shame though, because the line, this devil's drink is delicious, is a really good line. Stick that on a T-shirt.
10:20 Speaker 05 I feel like Clooney could really.
10:21 Greg Jenner? Yeah, exactly.
10:25 Greg Jenner? By the 1600s, I think we find coffee in Europe.
10:27 Speaker 06 We know in Venice, which obviously was a port city, you'd have a lot of Turkish merchants in there. One of them died in Venice in about 1575.
10:38 Greg Jenner? He was murdered, right?
10:38 Speaker 06 He was murdered.
10:39 Greg Jenner? Yeah, he didn't just die, he was killed.
10:42 Speaker 06 So they had an investigation. So obviously he had to go and look at his stuff and in it they found little coffee cups. So we kind of deduced from that that coffee was beginning to be drunk in Venice. At least by those sort of, you know, expatriate merchants. From that, then we begin to hear things about coffee being used as a medicine. So you could be prescribed coffee.
11:01 Greg Jenner? Sophie, would you take a prescription of coffee? It doesn't sound like you would do any good.
11:04 Speaker 05 I feel like it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't do good stuff for me, but not medicinally, but functionally. So like the medicine to get you through your essay crisis.
11:12 Greg Jenner? We've seen in the Ottoman world that the idea of the coffee house could be seditious and dangerous, but also there would be intellectual activity there, people gathering, discussing, debating political ideas. Does the same thing happen in Europe?
11:24 Speaker 06 This is Britain's greatest contribution to coffee.
11:27 Greg Jenner? Oh.
11:27 Speaker 06 In my personal view, because once you kind of really go into it, actually, the date suggests that the first thing that is definitively a coffee house, i.e. a place that you go, get served coffee, sit around, drink it, have a chat, is here in London.
11:44 Greg Jenner? Oh.
11:45 Speaker 06 In 1652 to 54, because we have a guy called Pasquale Rosé who sets this up. There are people who talk about coffee houses being present in Italy, but when you look at those, they look more like places that sell coffee beans. So Pasquale Rosé comes over, he is recruited by a local businessman here, comes over as his manservant, then opens his coffee house under his patronage, near St Michael's Church in Cornhill, just by the Bank of England. And with two years, he's actually got a proper coffee house. As you can imagine, there are different kinds of coffee houses for different kinds of people, but a lot of the coffee houses become places where people are transacting, as it were, some form of business.
12:26 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
12:26 Speaker 06 I'm going to mention Jonathan's because after all, I should.
12:29 Greg Jenner? Yes.
12:29 Speaker 06 And Jonathan's is really the sort of the origin of the London Stock Exchange. Traders meeting there, trading bonds, et cetera. But then you get other ones where you kind of bring together, you know, your clientele comes together and they're a very particular kind. So you would have people who were interested in science, as in science as was understood then.
12:49 Greg Jenner? It's a natural philosophy at the time.
12:51 Speaker 06 Yeah, exactly, who come together to debate things. You would get people who are interested in politics, who come together to debate politics. One of the origins of the ballot box is supposed to be that, you know, a ballot box was invented for holding debates in coffee houses because you then have to go around and get everyone to vote. So you get them to throw their ballot into a box.
13:10 Greg Jenner? Oh, really?
13:10 Speaker 06 Yeah, absolutely.
13:12 Greg Jenner? We need to talk about the darker side of this coffee boom. You know, where do these things originate from? By the 1600s and definitely the 1700s, we're getting coffee plantations?
13:22 Speaker 06 So really, by the, it's at the very end of the sixteen hundreds, the seventeen hundreds, really. So what has happened is that the Ottomans have really kind of controlled the trade in coffee. It's all done through the port of Al-Makair, or what we call Mokka.
13:40 Greg Jenner? Ah, really?
13:41 Speaker 06 Yeah, absolutely. And they're very careful to try and protect that and make it a monopoly. Eventually, the Dutch managed to get hold of some coffee, which they find actually growing in India. They take it to Indonesia, they plant it on the island of Java originally. So that's the first time that coffee is really grown outside of its sort of indigenous areas. Then also, the French get hold of it, the other European powers. And the place that they then take it, the French take it to the Isle of Bourbon, which is now Réunion, off Africa. But really, the big place is the Caribbean.
14:14 Greg Jenner? Sure.
14:14 Speaker 06 They go to the Caribbean, plant coffee in a variety of places. The Dutch plant it on Suriname, the French plant it in what was then their colony called Saint-Domingue, which becomes Haiti.
14:27 Greg Jenner? So by the seventeen eighties, eighty percent of the world's coffee supply comes from the Caribbean?
14:31 Speaker 06 Just to make this absolutely explicit.
14:33 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
14:34 Speaker 06 That is plantation coffee grown by enslaved people.
14:37 Greg Jenner? Right.
14:37 Speaker 06 Yeah. So that's the key thing.
14:39 Greg Jenner? Right, okay. So where does Britain muscle in to this history?
14:43 Speaker 06 So the Brits, their sort of one period that they really get into coffee is when they take over the island of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, from the Dutch. Yeah. They go into Ceylon and the overthrow, actually, there's an area called the Kingdom of Candy. It's kind of indigenous sort of areas rule in the kind of the interior. They then kind of clear down the forests and want to sort of introduce production. And what they think is the ideal crop is coffee. It's a pretty destructive process. So they kill off a lot of the wildlife, kill off sixty percent of the Ceylon's elephants.
15:20 Greg Jenner? Oh, no.
15:21 Speaker 06 No, really bad. They also bring over to work this, a lot of workers from Tamil Nadu, Tamils from India, on a kind of, you know, indentured labour type schemes.
15:32 Greg Jenner? Right.
15:33 Speaker 06 I think the easiest way to say these people are not well treated, lots of them die. I mean, this is totally new territory for them. They're marched all the way up into the Highlands, so it is not a great scenario.
15:45 Greg Jenner? So this is 1815, this deforestation and plantation happens. Okay, so we've had some pretty horrible history there. We've had, let's try and be a little cheerier.
15:55 Speaker 05 Hey.
15:56 Greg Jenner? Sophie, when do you think America fell in love with their cup of joe, the US?
16:01 Speaker 05 Oh.
16:02 Greg Jenner? What do you think their kind of inciting moment is where they go, hang on a second, we're coffee drinkers?
16:06 Speaker 05 I feel like maybe the late 1900s.
16:10 Greg Jenner? Oh, you've gone late?
16:12 Speaker 05 No, no, no, the late 19th century.
16:14 Greg Jenner? You've gone, okay, so you're like 1880 something like that.
16:16 Speaker 05 Yeah, that's what I've, that's 1880 is what came into my head. It's too late, isn't it?
16:20 Greg Jenner? It is quite late, yeah. I think we can go earlier than that.
16:22 Speaker 05 Okay, fine.
16:23 Greg Jenner? If I say to you, Boston Tea Party.
16:25 Speaker 05 No.
16:27 Greg Jenner? You'll just reject that outright, no.
16:30 Speaker 05 The early 17th century?
16:31 Greg Jenner? So you've gone too early now, I think, maybe, or maybe you haven't, Jonathan? The Boston Tea Party is obviously in the 1770s.
16:37 Speaker 06 Yes, so actually, no, in one sense, I think Sophie's right both times, which is quite an achievement.
16:44 Speaker 05 Thank you, thanks for rebranding.
16:48 Speaker 06 Because, you know, yeah, there's coffee in America, being sold in America. I mean, there's a first person that's licensed to sell coffee, somebody called Dorothy Jones, and that's in 1670. So, I mean, it's in colonial America.
16:59 Greg Jenner? Well done, Sophie.
16:59 Speaker 06 You can, you can take the point.
17:01 Speaker 05 Thank you, yeah.
17:01 Speaker 06 What does really kick off coffee in the, in the States, I think, is really two events. One key one is the Civil War. And the Civil War, if you like, there is almost an explanation of the Civil War that goes, one side has coffee and the other doesn't. And the side that has coffee, which is actually the North.
17:21 Greg Jenner? Oh.
17:22 Speaker 06 Win.
17:23 Speaker 05 Okay.
17:23 Speaker 06 Because they give their troops coffee, enough coffee to probably serve maybe even 10 cups of coffee a day. But they recognise that, you know, the generals recognise coffee is kind of comforting, it's warm, it's very easy to do.
17:35 Greg Jenner? And it's a stim.
17:36 Speaker 06 And it's a stimulant. And that kind of creates a class of people who then want to drink coffee thereafter. And then at the same time, and this goes back to your point about the eighteen eighties, right, that's the point of obviously mass immigration into America from Europe. So getting coffee is kind of a proof of arriving in America and having made America. Do you see what I mean?
17:54 Greg Jenner? Yeah, okay.
17:55 Speaker 06 It's an aspirational thing in Europe. You get to America, you can probably drink coffee.
18:00 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
18:00 Speaker 06 Because the coffee is more easily obtained.
18:03 Greg Jenner? And you've, so the American Civil War was in the eighteen sixties, obviously.
18:06 Speaker 06 Yeah.
18:06 Greg Jenner? And we've, I mean, this extraordinary thing, soldiers' diaries mention the word coffee more than the word bullet or rifle. We also have a soldier called Lieutenant, well, Lieutenant Colonel Walter King. It's a soldier in Missouri Caval Regiment who designs a rifle which has got an inbuilt coffee grinder.
18:24 Speaker 05 Oh.
18:25 Greg Jenner? We also get, Jonathan, at this time, customers buying loose green coffee beans. They're roasting them at home. So you can now make coffee at home. When does, when do coffee granules show up? When can you, when is it, you know, something that comes in a little pack, you spoon it out and you stir it in the bottom of the cup?
18:40 Speaker 06 Yeah, so there are attempts at doing this sort of, you know, soluble coffees from about the nineteen hundreds.
18:46 Greg Jenner? Hmm.
18:47 Speaker 06 And indeed, some of them are developed, the First World War, we see the American soldiers get some sort of supposedly instant coffee. But actually, the real, what we understand as instant coffee is really a product more of the Second World War. Just before then, we see the invention of, as it were, Nescafe, or the creation of Nescafe, which is really the first of those sort of instant brands. And that sort of then ironically is brought back into Europe by the Americans because the work has to be done over in the States because it's, you know, it can't be done in Europe because it's in the middle of conflict. They bring it back on their backpacks.
19:21 Greg Jenner? Right.
19:22 Speaker 06 Essentially. And so this becomes then sort of the takeoff of instant coffee after the Second World War, becomes part of the range of the big American roasters in America, but it actually becomes really big in Europe, particularly in those sort of non-traditional coffee drinking countries like the UK.
19:41 Greg Jenner? Interesting.
19:42 Speaker 05 I have a question.
19:43 Greg Jenner? Yeah, go for it.
19:43 Speaker 05 Was there like a, was there or does there emerge a sort of gendered narrative about coffee, about women not drinking coffee because they'll get nervous or shaky or start trying to get a vote?
19:53 Speaker 06 There's actually been that narrative for some time.
19:56 Greg Jenner? Hmm.
19:56 Speaker 06 Actually, right back to the introduction of coffee in Britain. I mean, it's very much a male thing. Coffee is the male drink, tea is the female drink, et cetera. And then there's a, you know, the whole thing about women really not being in coffee houses at that time. But I think also the interesting thing with these, you know, the use of advertising is it is another way around where people write ads that are basically about are you a good enough wife? Do you know how to make your husband's coffee just right?
20:23 Greg Jenner? By the late 19th century, the Americans are getting their coffee from South America now. Brazil becomes a huge coffee producing nation, doesn't it?
20:31 Speaker 06 Yeah, Brazil becomes the dominant coffee producer in the late 19th century and it still is the largest coffee producer in the world. Sao Paulo and the Paulistas, the coffee barons of Sao Paulo, become so powerful that actually when the Portuguese, well, when Brazilians imperial family, which is an offshoot of the Portuguese royal family, too complicated to get into, but when they get thrown out, it's these Paulistas who really take over the running of the country.
21:00 Greg Jenner? The coffee barons take over the country?
21:01 Speaker 06 The coffee barons take over the country, help the coffee grow, it's coffee to the point that, well, the key date is perhaps by 1906. 1906, they produce over 80, 85% of the world's coffee.
21:16 Greg Jenner? The world's coffee?
21:17 Speaker 06 The world's coffee.
21:18 Greg Jenner? Wow.
21:19 Speaker 06 And I have to say, 70% of that 85% then gets shipped into the States, which is the world's big coffee market. So that's the way that it works.
21:29 Greg Jenner? And by the 1920s, Colombia, Central American countries, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala are also.
21:33 Speaker 06 Are also beginning to get into this.
21:35 Greg Jenner? Yeah, so and the world starts to become familiar to us now. The coffee, the labels and names on our packets, we start to go, I know that. And we also get the rise of robusta. Robusta is a different species?
21:46 Speaker 06 So robusta is a different species and it is somewhat more tolerant. It gets replanted in Asia and it gets replanted in those new, particularly West African states. And as a result of that, you know, Africa again becomes quite a powerful producer of coffee from about the 1970s.
22:05 Greg Jenner? Okay, yeah, so both West Africa and East Africa where it originated in the first beginning of our episode. Okay, so we're into the 20th century and then by 1971, we get a major moment in global history, globalization history. We get the founding of which coffee shop in Seattle, Sophie?
22:21 Speaker 05 In Seattle, it's going to be Starbucks.
22:25 Greg Jenner? It is Starbucks. And this is important, I suppose, for economic reasons, for corporate reasons, but also just a sort of taste reasons in terms of the idea of speciality coffees, the idea of coffee is something you can enjoy. Almost like you enjoy red wine.
22:42 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah, and I think one of the things you say about the original Starbucks is actually the original Starbucks just sells coffee beans. And what it's doing is selling a whole different sets of varieties of coffee beans. So what it's saying is it's not just coffee. There are all these different kinds of coffees. They have all these different kinds of flavours and processes, et cetera, and you should pick one that you like. And it's this sort of speciality coffee idea is that this is therefore not ordinary coffee. It's not the stuff that you're getting in the supermarket, but it's something quite distinctive.
23:12 Greg Jenner? So there we go, Sophie. We've done a lot of latte history.
23:16 Greg Jenner? We've gone around the world, we've seen coffee was religious, medical, political, colonial, cultural, industrial. Does it change your view of, are you more tempted to go out and drink a coffee now? Or are you less tempted?
23:25 Speaker 05 I, I, I think it feels like I want to be in on the party. I felt sort of maybe like a psychosomatic reaction to talking about coffee so long. Like, I feel quite hyped up. Like, it's not been a relaxing chat.
23:40 Greg Jenner? Sorry.
23:41 Speaker 05 Because I think even hearing it, I'm like, maybe it's my associations with coffee have been mainly as a sort of wonder drug to finish an essay and less about a sort of salon culture.
23:50 Greg Jenner? Yeah, we've heard a lot today about people getting together and being together and socialising, chatting, communing, it's...
23:56 Speaker 05 Yeah, I think maybe like, I'm trying to think about what the modern equivalent is or what the like young upstart is, and I feel like it's probably either like bubble tea or creams milkshakes. And that's where, that's the hotbed of political dissent today.
24:09 Greg Jenner? The nuance window!
24:16 Greg Jenner? This is where Sophie and I sit silently and sip our mockers for two minutes while Professor Jonathan tells us something we need to know about the history of coffee. My stopwatch is ready. Take it away, Professor Jonathan.
24:26 Speaker 06 Okay, well, I'm going to start with the risen old farmer who has proudly showed us around his beautiful coffee red cherries drying on the patio outside his house in the province of Lampung in Sumatra. And so I asked him who he's going to sell those to, and he said, no one. Those are the best quality. I'm keeping them for myself. And I can't tell you how much that answer made me happy and move me. Because the coffee trade has long continued to reproduce the structures of its colonial past. A crop that indigenous peoples were forced to cultivate by foreign fiat, that was often tended by unfree labour, enabling the price to consumers in, as it were, the global north to be kept low at the expense of producers in the global south.
25:07 Speaker 06 Unsurprisingly then, very few producer countries adopted coffee drinking into their own culture. The coffee trade has long continued to reproduce the structures of its colonial past. A crop that indigenous peoples were forced to cultivate by foreign fiat, and that was often tended by unfree labour, enabling the price to consumers in the global north to be kept low at the expense of producers in the global south. Unsurprisingly, few producer countries adopted coffee drinking into their culture. Post-independence, many former colonies continued to actively prevent coffee being consumed within the country in order to garner precious foreign exchange reserves. It's still not unusual to meet farmers who have never tasted any form of coffee, let alone sampled their own coffee.
25:50 Speaker 06 When I first began my research into coffee in the early 2000s, the trade appeared to be in somewhat of an existential crisis. For four consecutive years, the benchmark price for commodity coffee was below that of the cost of production, leading literally to starvation among families that depended upon it for their livelihood. The price collapse was caused by an excess of global production over demand, particularly as Brazil and Vietnam upped their output and sought to undercut their competitors. Paradoxically, this coincided with the explosion of the modern coffee shop format, exemplified by Starbucks. Today, the picture looks very different. Prices are at their highest since the 1970s. While some of that is due to the impact of climate volatility on supply,
26:33 Speaker 06 an underpinning factor is the growth of demand in new markets, including that of producer countries themselves. Asia is driving this with more coffee shops per capita in Seoul than in Seattle. China's increased its green coffee imports by 50% in the last five years, much of it from Vietnam, while Indonesia itself now consumes 40% of its coffee. The transnational culture of coffee consumption that has taken off offers both a sustainable future for the global coffee industry and a way out of those colonial hangers of the past.
27:05 Greg Jenner? Wonderful. Thank you. Sophie, any thoughts on that?
27:08 Speaker 05 That was very, I mean, I like that there's like a sort of glimmer of hope or like a kind of like retaken of the coffee narrative from, yeah, those producer countries just sort of being entirely beholden to the whims of the global north. So, yeah, I was just like, okay, I'm cancelling the beans, the beans are cancelled. But I think it's quite cool and it's quite cool to see like a kind of renaissance in cultural coffee consumption and how that fits into different places.
27:33 Greg Jenner? Okay, listener, if you want to double down on Juca, you can check out our episodes on Benedetta Carlini, Ashanti Ghana, The Chevalier de Saint George, if you want some musical history. And for more foodie historical stuff, we have episodes on the history of chocolate, on the history of ice cream, and on celebrity chef Alexis Soyer, which is one of my favourite episodes. That's a very fun one. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear the episodes one month before other platforms, lucky you. Make sure also to have your notifications switched on so you never miss an episode. But I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We had the coffee historian himself, Professor Jonathan Morris from the University of Hertfordshire. Thank you, Jonathan.
28:12 Speaker 06 Thank you, Greg, and enjoy your coffee.
28:14 Greg Jenner? I will, I will give it my best. And in Comedy Corner, we had the ever sensational Sophie Juca. Thank you, Sophie.
28:20 Speaker 05 Thank you so much. Thank you.
28:22 Greg Jenner? And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we savour another historical delight. But for now, I'm off to try and convince the Pope to sanction my debilitating hot chocolate habit. Bye.
28:38 Speaker 03 Best Medicine, dissecting funny and fascinating medicine.
28:42 Speaker 07 I think pain management is the best medicine. Bibliotherapy, therapy by books.
28:48 Speaker 03 Sleep.
28:50 Speaker 03 Well, spot the comedian. Celebrating medicine's past, present and future.
28:56 Speaker 00 I think transplantation is the best medicine because it can completely change someone's life.
29:00 Greg Jenner? Defibrillation.
29:01 Speaker 03 Oh, defibrillation, okay. Amazing machines, that much is clear. Sorry, clear! That's the new series of Best Medicine from Radio 4 with me, Kieran Pritchard-McLean. Available now on BBC Sounds.
29:25 Greg Jenner? Welcome to The Haunted Library.
29:29 Greg Jenner? Join me, Colin Morgan, as I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. A story of science and ambition, loneliness and longing, and what it truly means to be human.
29:45 Greg Jenner? Listen to The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts, or find us on YouTube.
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