Thursday, April 16, 2009

Coffee - Rear Vision

ABC's Rear Vision delved into the history of coffee in one of the last podcasts (18 March).

In the early globalizing world the Dutch planted coffee in their green houses first and on Java afterwards. Other colonialists took coffee to Brazil. The drinking habits of ordinary people shifted from alcoholic beverages, to the caffeinated ones. (Apart from coffee, also tea). The place to drink coffee became the coffee house, which was also the spot to read newspapers and discuss politics.

It is supposed on the program, coffee thus caused the major revolutions that make up the modern world. The misty effect of alcohol made place for the vigors of caffeine, causing enlightenment, increased productivity and industrial revolution. The heated discussions on the coffee houses made for the American and French revolutions. Today, modern economy couldn't function without the speedy kick of coffee, tea and caffeinated energy drinks. Nice thought and it demands the entailing question: what is the next drug? And the next turn of history that it will cause?

More Rear Vision:
Fiji.

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1 comment:

Jon and Diana said...

Thanks Anne, I enjoyed that one too. I once sat next to a man at a lunch who had imported the second espresso machine into Melbourne in the 1950s. I had assumed that the machines (now completely de rigeur in Melbourne - office workers now have coffee breaks instead of smoking breaks) came with the wave of italian migrants, not realising as I learnt from the programme, that they had just been invented.

Jon