Some historical glimpses of coffee history

Francisco de Mello Palheta of Brazil in 1727 was sent to French Guinea to obtain coffee seeds. Like the Arabians, and the Dutch, the French didn't want their coffee plants cultivated by other countries either. Legend has it, de Mello charmed the French governor's wife and she buried some coffee seeds in a bouquet of flowers. So, again coffee was swiped and brought to Brazil and Mexico where coffee cultivation got going around 1729. The another story has it that a coffee seed was imported into Surinam in 1719, and a coffee seed from there or Cayenne reached Brazil in 1723. It wasn't until 1767 that the first coffee estate in Brazil is said to have been planted.

Then around 1893 the coffee plant completed its journey around the world where coffee plants were introduced in Kenya and Tanzania. Thus, the coffee plant was the first plant to be cultivated around the world.

Robusta coffee grows indigenously in Uganda and the Congo. The second coming of Robusta coffee took place around the 1902. Africa was just being explored by the Europeans. When the Europeans found Robusta coffee, the seeds were exported right away. Robusta coffee plants found there way to Madagascar, West Africa, Angola, West Indies, and Vietnam. This was because even as late as the 1900's, having fertile coffee beans for export is a crime in most coffee growing countries. Since central Africa was not well controlled, explorers took what they wanted and the spread of Robusta coffee began on a relatively large scale.

After World War I, the coffee plant spread to just about everywhere coffee could grow. Due to the war, some countries got formed, others got eliminated, and manys got broken up. WWII did the same thing. Many countries went through changes in coffee growing as disease, ignorance, and weather wiped out whole plantations' of coffee plants. At times, some countries didn't have coffee growing for whole decades. As economics and intelligence change, coffee growing has been reintroduced in many of the countries which gave up growing coffee. The coffee plant is not as protected as it use to be from the standpoint of hording. It is protected from the standpoint of damage however. So, coffee plants finally found their way into homes.

For no other reason than dating purposes, and not all that accurate, here is a dated coffee propagation history: