Coffee is a powerful beverage.On a personal level,it helps keep US awake and active.On a much broader level,it has helped shape our history and continues to shape our culture. Coffee didn't take off until the l400s when people figured out they could roast its seeds.By the l500s,the drink had spread to coffeehouses across the Arab world.Within another l50 years,it took Europe by storm. "It actually had a major impact on the rise of business," historian Mark Pendergrast says.Coffeehouses became a spot not just to enjoy a cup but to exchange ideas.The insurer Lloyd's of London was founded hundreds of years ago in one of London's 2,000 coffeehouses.Literature,newspapers and even the works of great composers like Bach and Beethoven were also spawned in coffeehouses. It is often said that after the Boston Tea Party of l773,when American colonists attacked British tea ships and threw boxes of tea into the harbor,Americans universally switched over to drinking coffee.In a letter John Adams wrote to his wife,Abigail,the Founding Father claims his love of tea but says he will have to learn to embrace coffee instead,because drinking tea had become a symbol of not loving the country. For all the upsides coffee has brought the modern world,it also led to its fair share of downsides,too.Europeans carried coffee with them as they colonized various parts of the world,and this frequently meant they enslaved people in order to grow it.In Brazil -- where slavery was legal until l888 -- coffee plantations would use slash-and-burn agriculture,tearing down rain forests and planting coffee trees.Once the soil had been exhausted,growers would move on to another place. And yet,coffee,as Pendergrast says,"had a very good impact in many ways on our civilization,even though it was,for a long time,grown by slaves." Why did people enjoy going to coffeehouses?
Because it was a fashion to drink coffee. Because coffeehouses provided a better flavor. Because they could stay awake and active there. Because they could exchange ideas there.