What is the history of coffee?
Much of the early history of coffee was tied to oral tradition in modern-day Ethiopia. Presently, there is no evidence of coffee consumption and cultivation before the 15th century. Yemeni monks drank coffee to aid in concentration during prayers. In the early 16th century, coffee spread to the Levant and Persia. Later in the 16th-century coffee arrived in Italy via Mediterranean trade routes. The Ottomans brought it to Central and Eastern Europe. It reached India by the mid-17th century.England and Germany pioneered the coffee house concept that emerged in Western Europe. The Caribbean island of Martinique hosted one of the earliest ex-situ coffee cultivations in the New World - Gabriel de Clieu brought coffee seedlings here in 1720. These resulted in coffee plantations in other Caribbean islands like Saint-Domingue (which, by 1788, supplied half of the world's coffee) and also in Mexico.Brazil is currently the largest coffee producer globally, a status held since 1852. Since 1950, a number of other major producers emerged, including Colombia, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, and Vietnam. Today, coffee is a household item as a result of modern production techniques and mass productization.