---
type: Concept
title: History of Coffee
description: Coffee's origin in the Ethiopian highlands, its spread through Yemen,
  the Arab world, and Europe, and its early trade alongside tea, to today's leading
  producers.
tags:
- coffee
- history
- trade
resource: raw/coffee-guide.md
timestamp: '2026-07-16T15:46:20Z'
citadel_version: 0.3.0
---

Coffee was first cultivated in the highlands of Ethiopia, where *Coffea arabica* grows wild and where the practice of preparing the seeds as a drink is believed to have originated.[^s1] From this East African cradle, coffee crossed the Red Sea and took firm root in Yemen, where it was systematically cultivated and traded; the Yemeni port of Mocha became so closely associated with the commodity that its name endures as a coffee term to this day.[^s1]

Through Yemen and the wider Arab world, coffee spread as both a commercial good and a social institution, and coffeehouses became centers of conversation, commerce, and learning across the region long before the drink was known in Europe.[^s2] By the 17th century, coffee had reached the European continent, where it was initially regarded as an exotic novelty before rapidly becoming a fixture of urban life; European coffeehouses, like their predecessors in the Arab world, grew into gathering places for merchants, writers, and political thinkers.[^s2]

Coffee's early trade into Europe often ran alongside tea's rather than as a wholly separate story: merchant houses that shipped tea from the China coast commonly carried coffee in the same holds, since a ship already bound for the tea ports typically called at coffee-growing regions along the way — the merchant house [Thornbury & Lin](../organizations/thornbury-lin.md) is one documented example, trading the two commodities side by side from its founding in 1657.[^s4]

As demand grew, colonial powers carried coffee cultivation to tropical regions across the globe, establishing plantations throughout Asia, Africa, and the Americas and reshaping the geography of production.[^s3] Today the largest producer of coffee in the world is Brazil, whose vast plantations supply an enormous share of the global market; Vietnam ranks second, having risen to prominence largely on the strength of [Robusta](../objects/robusta.md) cultivation, with Colombia, Indonesia, Ethiopia, and several nations of Central America also significant producers.[^s3]

## See also
- [Coffee](../objects/coffee.md)
- [Arabica](../objects/arabica.md)
- [Robusta](../objects/robusta.md)
- [Thornbury & Lin](../organizations/thornbury-lin.md)
- [History of Tea](history-of-tea.md)

## Sources
[^s1]: [raw/coffee-guide.md](../../raw/coffee-guide.md), line 28 — Ethiopian origin and spread to Yemen (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s2]: [raw/coffee-guide.md](../../raw/coffee-guide.md), line 30 — spread through the Arab world and to Europe (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s3]: [raw/coffee-guide.md](../../raw/coffee-guide.md), line 32 — colonial expansion and today's leading producers (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s4]: [raw/tea-history-and-trade.md](../../raw/tea-history-and-trade.md), line 25 — tea and coffee traded together in the same holds, ships calling at coffee ports en route to the tea coast (ingested 2026-07-16)
