More than any other drink, the quantity of milk in coffee is enfantalizing. It's very different from having your shot o man expresso and then rushing off to do some important bisiness. Only recently have people started worrying about whether er not the milk's organic or where it's sauced from. So there's huge quantities of milk which are are being consumed. And there's usually, in coffee coffee houses, very little am talk of the milk. O mean, th it's all about the romance of coffee,. even though the coffee is a vanishing, small percentage of the sal drink.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 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