Archive: Coffee

Misha Glenny delves in to the In Our Time archive to select ten episodes for listeners to revisit. His second choice, first released in December 2019, is the history and social impact of coffee. From its origins in Ethiopia, coffea arabica spread through the Ottoman Empire before reaching Western Europe where, in the 17th century, coffee houses were becoming established. There, caffeinated customers stayed awake for longer and were more animated, and this helped to spread ideas and influence culture. Coffee became a colonial product, grown by slaves or indentured labour, with coffea robusta replacing arabica where disease had struck, and was traded extensively by the Dutch and French empires; by the 19th century, Brazil had developed into a major coffee producer, meeting demand in the USA that had grown on the waggon trails.

With

Judith Hawley
Professor of 18th Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London

Markman Ellis
Professor of 18th Century Studies at Queen Mary University of London

And

Jonathan Morris
Professor in Modern History at the University of Hertfordshire

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Brian Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (Yale University Press, 2005)

Benoit Daviron and Stefano Ponte, The Coffee Paradox: Global Markets, Commodity Trade and the Elusive Promise of Development (Zed Books, 2005)

Markman Ellis, The Coffee House: A Cultural History (Orion, 2004)

Ralph Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses: The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East (University of Washington Press, 1985)

Jonathan Morris, Coffee: A Global History (Reaktion, 2018)

Mark Prendergast Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed our World (Basic Books, 2010)

Claudia Roden, Coffee (Faber, 1977)

William Clarence Smith and Steven Topik (eds.), The Global Coffee Economy in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, 1500-1989 (Cambridge University Press, 2003)

William H. Ukers, All About Coffee (first published 1935; Martino Fine Books, 2011)

Anthony Wild, Black Gold: The Dark History of Coffee (Harper Perennial, 2010)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios production

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Show less