I was relishing a cup of coffee this morning and thinking about its history, both a personal history and the history of coffee itself.
Personally, I disliked coffee. I did not like the smell or taste.
Now, having become a good south Indian, I love a cup of good, strong, hot filter coffee.
At a more general level, I often wonder how tea, coffee and tobacco entered human lives. What strange human being imagined the result of the complicated process that goes into the making of these things?
In a book I read some time ago, The Moneylender’s Daughter, there was one amusing section about coffee.
In 17th century Holland, one merchant attempted to convince another to invest in coffee.
“Coffee? What good is coffee?” the second merchant replied. (I’m paraphrasing, of course.)
The first merchant stumbled, trying to explain how it was a drink that was sure to catch the world’s fancy.
“Rubbish!” replied the second merchant. “If this liquid had some medicinal properties, if it was some kind of cure, people would buy it. With nothing like that, why on earth would anyone drink coffee?”
If a record like this exists within the merchant’s family (and I’m sure he was by no means unique), I wonder what his descendants would be thinking right now, especially if they didn’t cash in on something that really took the world by storm!
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