Digital Sprocket

Like many people in the industrialized world, I begin each morning with a cup of tea. How many internet startups were fueled by coffee and Mountain Dew? Coffee, tea, chocolate, and cola tend to spark the mind and ease our sagging spirits.

But…there was a time when Europe had no caffeine. No, I’m not talking about the shortages during WWII. Rather, there are no major caffeine sources native to Europe. The Roman Empire and its medieval successor states were caffeine free. They had no quick pick me ups in the middle of the afternoon. Their intellectuals couldn’t hang out at a coffee shop hammering out new models for the universe or human interaction.

My question is, did the arrival of caffeine impact the rate of technological and society changes in Europe? To do this, we first need to determine when major sources of caffeine became generally available. It’s not enough to say when the it started to trickle in, but rather when could the average middleclass man or woman enter a shop and buy a cup of coffee, tea, or chocolate?

Surprisingly, the answer is about the same for all three beverages. Since I’m a tea drinker, that’s where I’ll start. The Chinese consumed tea at least since the 10th Century BC. Tea drinking fueled all of the great Chinese empires. Their monks and other intellectual drank the golden liquor and refined its ceremonies. They passed tea drinking on to their Himalayan neighbors to the south, Mongolians to the north, and eventually to the Islamic nations to the west.
The Portuguese established their first Asian trading colony in Macau in 1557, and soon started sending tea samples back home. Czar Michael I of Russia received a gift of tea from China in 1618. This led to the great camel tea caravans connecting Russia and China. By the 17th Century, the Dutch East India Company was making regular tea deliveries to Holland, and coffee houses were popping up in England and on the continent.

The story of coffee is similar. Ethiopians were drinking coffee at least by the 9th Century. From there the beverage spread to their neighbors, making its way to Egypt, Arabia, and eventually Turkey. A lively cross Mediterranean trade sprang up and during the Renaissance small quantities of coffee appeared in Venice. In 1600 Pope Clement VIII paved the way for the further spread by declaring that coffee was an acceptable beverage for a Christian to drink. By the late 17th Century coffee houses were springing up in England.

Chocolate arrived in Europe courtesy of the Spanish conquest of Central and South America. Chocolate drinking was well established in prehistoric Mexico at least by 1100 BC. After the Spanish massacred the Aztecs, they brought cocoa beans back to Spain along with the rest of their loot. In 1585 a regular chocolate trade sprang up between Vera Cruz and Savilla. Like our other two beverages, chocolate drinking houses appeared in England by the middle of the 17th Century.

All three beverages appeared on the European stage at about the same time. Did these accelerate the pace of change on the continent? Can the spread of coffee to Arabia help explain the flowering of Islamic art, medicine, and scientific inquiry? How important were coffee, tea, and chocolate to establishing the modern world?