The Dutch may have
been the first Europeans to popularize coffee drinking in the Netherlands and
Europe, but it was the Venetians (Modern Italy) that discovered the humble
beverage through their trading connections with the Ottoman Empire (modern
Turkey) in Asia Minor.
The Republic of
Venice grew from the lagoon communities in the area of Venice in north eastern
Italy in the years that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire in 476 AD. The Most
Serene Republic of Venice as the state soon became to be know properly thrived
from circa 7th century AD until the year 1797 for almost an entire millennium.
The foundation of this empire was based upon a rapidly growing economic power
in the wake of the collapse of Rome which stemmed from maritime supremacy in
the Adriatic which gradually grew into a trading power across the region and
into the Aegean where West meets East and where Venetian trading outposts came
into contact with the Ottoman Empire of modern Turkey.
 |
| Venetian state 1000 AD |
Rome, having been
eclipsed by invading northern tribes of the Visigoths, Lombardi and Hun, faded into
insignificance as the great city of Constantinople continued to thrive in the eastern
section of the Roman Empire to become the Byzantine Empire. With eyes on the
main prize being Rome itself the invading Lombards and Huns did not have the
time to think about invading a lesser prize of minor coastal cities and lagoon
communities in the north east. With this respire in mind the Venetians quietly began to quickly reorganizing themselves and
consolidate their regional power into a defensive force should ever the invaders of Rome contemplate a
meaningless advance into the north eastern part of Italy where wealth was scarce and economy poor at the time. Years would pass by and peace reigned in the
lands of the Venetian communities until one Orso Ipato was confirmed by
Constantinople and the Byzantine Emperor Leo III, with the titles of hypatus
and dux (duke) as the first historically known Doge of Venice in 726 AD.
On the other side of
the Adriatic and across the Aegean Sea Constantinople fell before the Sultan
Mehmed II of the Turks in 1453 thus
bringing an end to the Byzantine Empire and indeed closing the chapter
on the story of Rome th
Mehemed marched into the noble city and
proclaimed this conquest to endear to memory by announcing that the
Ottoman capital would be moved from modern Turkey to Constantinople, or modern
Istanbul. The fair city of Roman emperors since 330 AD and the seat of
Christendom was now over-taken itself.
With a mighty army of 200,000 men the Sultan crossed the Bosphorus
which separates modern Turkey from Europe. So large was the fleet that the entire channel
crossing to Constantinople was engulfed by 320 vessels as the siege came into
effect. Constantinople could only last 57 days and on May 29.
As Sultan Mehmed
stepped into the ruins of the Boukoleon, known to the Ottomans and Persians as
the Palace of the Caesars, built 1100 years before by Theodosius II, the sultan
uttered the famous lines of Saadi
“ The spider weaves the curtains in the palace
of the Caesars
the owl calls the
watches in the towers of Afrasiab.”
Being situated on the Adriatic Sea Venice would always find itself trading goods along the coast of the Adriatic and into the Aegean with the cities of modern Greece and into Constantinople itself. First of all Venice had to consolidate it's defences, organize its armies and become such a deterrence for invading northern tribes that they could be left alone in peace. When the overall defensive goal was achieved, untroubled, Venice built her naval strength next in the 7th and 8th centuries AD and sought to rid the Adriatic of many Saracen and Slavic pirates plundering merchant vessels at the time.
From the 11th century onwards Venice became a major port of embarkation for pilgrims to the Holy lands and so Venetian vessels were constantly plying the seas for Holy missions. Venice also had a huge role to play carrying armies upon the Crusades. During the First Crusade Venice sent two hundred ships to assist bringing armies to the coastal cities of Syria. In 1110, Ordelafo Faliero, Doge of Venice, commanded a Venetian fleet of one hundred ships to assist King Baldwin I of Jerusalem and King Sigurd I of Norway in capturing the city of Sidon for Christendom. Thus through military involvement with her growing maritime power and the subsequent peace, by the late 12th century,
Venice was becoming very prosperous by coming into contact with the Muslim world and trading in spices and silks and all kinds of commodities that could be sent to the Medieval cities of Europe. In 1202 Venice partook in the plunder of Constantinople during the fourth crusade which ended the Byzantine rule briefly. Venice also organized the Aegean islands into the Venetian puppet the Duchy of the Archipelago. With the restoration of Byzantine rule at Constantinople in 1261 under Michael VIII Palaiologos, Venice retained rights and trading supremacy until the sack of the city later by Sultan Mehmed. But Venice also paid a huge price when Constantinople fell to the Sultam Mehmed and declared their own opposition to the Sultan. Hitherto, Venice enjoyed prosperity using Greek cities like Thessalonica as trading outposts into the Muslim world. A thirty years war ensued and this cost Venice a lot of money in defending Thessalonica and other Greek trading posts. With peace achieved Venice lost much of her Greek trading posts and wealth to pay a costly price to resume trade with the Ottoman world.
One of the first recorded examples of Venetian trade with the Ottomans comes in 1419 with an Ottoman merchant by the name of Celebi Mehmed Reis of Ankara. Now, the merchant Celebi Mehmed Reis of Ankara was known in the local Turkish trading world for trading spices and building a successful venture reaching Indian trade routes and down into Arabia. Furthermore, his trading networks via the Aegean Greek islands, even indirectly spread into the Adriatic with his traders coming into contact with Venetian merchants plying the Aegean. Very much today like an international commodities house, like Glencore for example,
the House of Celebi Mehmed Reis of Ankara was spread over a wide range of commodities such as fine wools from the Indian subcontinent and modern Pakistan, silk materials from India and China from the historical Silk Road, clothes of all sorts, leather pieces and spices. The gentleman is also know to have started an international money transfer system frequently holding large amounts of Venetian Ducats (silver money stable at 124 Venetian soldi) and Ottoman Sultani or Suleiman. With the establishment of Venetian trading outposts in the Aegean Sea venice could now command what no other European power of the time could achieve; namely, reliable access to the Silk Road via it's Ottoman trading partners. In spite of the chequered history of conflict with the Ottoman Empire, Europe through Venice now had access to the silk and spice markets which grew into direct shipping to Venice by 1573 when we hear of Ottoman merchants arriving at Venice and paying local trade taxes at the rate of 2000 ducat per year for unfettered and free access to Venetian ports.
Another successful international commodities trader that rose to prominence in the history of venetian trade was a merchant by the name of Resul Aga who flourished in commercial activities at Venice around 1590 - 1620. Having secured trade concessions with the state of Venice and payment of local taxes, Resul Aga had a fleet of commercial vessels plying between Venice and Constantinople carrying silks, spices and waxes. Resul Aga is also known to have set up his own foreign exchange trading house in Constantinople holding vast sums of Venetian Ducats for trade.
During the same time as the emergence of the Ottoman merchant Resul Aga, another merchant by the name of Cafer Pasa of Ankara came to prominence. Cafer Pasa is also know to have paid his taxes and delivered to the door steps of Venice fine wools, cottons and threads from India. Once again Cafe Pasa became a foreign exchange trader maintaining Ducats for Sultani and determining the rate of exchange which very much depended on those days if there was peace of conflict in the region not known for prolonged stability.
Thus with the emergence of vast trading networks into the Aegean Sea from the 1200's to the 1600's, the direct contact of Venice with Constantinople, during times of peace and conflict, almost ensured that Venice would be the first European nation to come into contact with the now popular beverage coffee long before the Dutch made the coffee drink a huge success in Northern Europe in the early 1600's. That merchants had to find a way through historical conflict was very much part of the dangers of economic trade in an ear where Europe and the Ottoman Empire was constantly in a state of friction as in the case of the Fourth Ottoman–Venetian War (1570–1573) where traders somehow had to find a way round the regional conflicts to ensure the delivery of silks and spices form Asian and maintain their profit. When referring to the map above it can be quickly seen how proximity with the old Byzantine Empire could only result in economic activity and war to secure prominence within such activity to control the tides of fortune in the Aegean and Adriatic Seas.
The Ottoman world and Arabia came into direct contact with the inevitable rise of Ottoman military might and it's expansion through the Middle East in the 1500's. In a swift campaign under Selim 1 the Ottoman armies absorbed the Middle East in a 3 year campaign. In 1514 the Ottomans marched into
modern Iran taking the cities of Tabriz and Ardabil. Then 1n 1516 the Ottomans took Aleppo and Damascus of modern Syria, Jerusalem in modern Israel, Cairo of modern Egypt in 1517 and finally Jeddha and Mecca in the same year in modern Saudi Arabia giving the Ottoman Empire total control of the Red Sea, Persian Gulf and direct access to the Indian ocean. Already the Ottoman Empire has come into direct contact with the coffee drinking culture that was spreading from Ethiopia to Saudi and then on to the Egyptian and Syrian cities in the 1400's. But now with the Ottoman Empire so vastly expanded into the Middle East the trade of coffee to modern Turkey was now complete as merchants from Egypt and Saudi sought to popularize the drink in new Turkish coffee houses emerging in modern Turkey. the military campaigns of the Ottomans to absorb modern Iran, Syria, Saudi and Egypt resulted in a vast congregation of different cultures, allbeit under the single religion of Islam. Thus it would become inevitable for Istanbul to allow a degree of tolerance in allowing the coffee drinking culture to spread should the new empire seek to integrate successfully and rapidly.
Venice and Egypt share a long trading history since the very first Crusades. Actually, the first formal Venetian trade agreements were made with the Ayyubid Sultans of Egypt in the early 1300's. The trade agreement formed was renewable regularly with valuations of taxes and even after the Ayyubid Sultans were succeeded by the Mamluks in the 1300's and then the Ottomans in 1517, trade agreements were maintained. The very first products traded from Egypt to Venice was rock crystals.
Since the Roman Empire and the days of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and Cleopatra, Rome and Egypt have shared common histories and cultures as civilizations clashed and merged within the melting pot of the age of Rome. As in the past, Venetian scholars were completely awed at the early history of Egypt sought to work at
deciphering the Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Egyptian antiquities were highly sought by Venetian humanists and wealthy collectors from the Venetian trading houses. Moreover a Venetian publisher, Aldine Press, published the first ever European produced Arabic version of the Koran. This cultural exchanges between Venice and Egypt was thriving by the 1400's. It was at this time Sufism as a culture was spreading rapidly and the first simple coffee houses were emerging in Cairo and in the cosmopolitan trading town of Aleppo in modern Syria. Venetian traders would have certainly encountered the beverage due to it's increasing popularity amongst the locals and local agents looking for information on commodities would have gravitated to coffee houses where loose congregation and jovial talk could provide much needed information for the Venetian commodity traders. But with the stimulating effects of the beverage fondly known as kahve and with the rowdy atmospheres that ensued, the Ottoman world was beginning to frown and so Egypt carried a brief ban in 1532 on coffee consumption. In fact prior to this ban, In 1511, the orthodox imams pushed for a complete ban at the theological court in Mecca. But these bans were unpopular and the ottomans knew that their had to be a balance between the ideas of the day In 1524 by an order of the Ottoman Turkish Sultan Selim I, with Grand Mufti Mehmet Ebussuud el-İmadi a fatwa was decreed allowing the popular consumption of coffee. Thereafter by the year 1555, during the reign of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire, the popular beverage was brought to Istanbul. formerly Constantinople, by Özdemir Pasha, the Ottoman Governor of Yemen for courtiers to sample. Already traders from Istanbul were recognizing the growth of coffee houses throughout the Ottoman Empire. Thus, the Venetians who were expanding their commodity trading ventures, encountered a new product as they sought to make in-roads into the new trading arena of coffee bean trading in the Ottoman World. Venice quickly sought to capitalize on it's dominant power and trade routes throughout the Ottoman trading ports of modern Turkey across to Egypt. Through the diplomacy of one of the oldest Venetian families - the house of Zen- and in particular the diplomatic efforts of Daragon Zen, the coffee bean was eventually brought to Venetian ports for trade with Europe by the early 1600's.
The Dutch quickly took advantage of the new product beverage and began formerly distributing the coffee bean in the Netherlands by 1612 where the beverage became an instant sensation with coffee houses springing up all over Europe from Rotterdam to Paris to London and across to Vienna. Although it was the ingenious Dutch that formally marketed and popularized the coffee beverage, it was the stolid Venetian commodity traders who first secured the trading routes of the coffee bean from the Ottoman world to Europe. But it was the Dutch who found out how to grow and cultivate the coffee plants of Mocha, Yemen in greenhouses in Amsterdam. This initial horticultural experiment and success became the inspiration for Dutch trade fleets to go to Java, Indonesia and Ceylon in the 1600's in search of the correct climates to grow the coffee plants on a mass scale.
Historical reflections on coffee by Pieter Bergli
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