Arabica coffee in history

Dutch were the only Europeans who managed to grow the coffee bush. Dutch imported the first coffee plant into Holland from Mocha in 1616. Coffee trees were cultivated in Ceylon in 1658 and in Java in 1696.

The Coffea Arabica seedlings were sent by the Dutch governor of Malabar to the Dutch governor of Batavia in 1696. The first seedlings failed due to flooding in Batavia so a second shipment of seedlings was sent in 1699.

The plant grew in Java and in 1711 the first plants were sent from Java to a hothouse in Amsterdam by the Dutch East India Company. In 1713, the Dutch sent a coffee bush as a royal gift to King Louis XIV. After a day of feasting his eyes on the exotic gift, the king put the tree in the hand of Professor Antoine de Jussieu and ordered that every effort be made to cajole this royal gift grow well.

 The first description of a coffee plant was in 1592 by Prospero Alpini. The first scientific reference to coffee was made by Antoine de Jussieu to the Royal Academy of Sciences of France in 1713 under the designation Jasminum arabicanum laurifolia.

But it was Carl von Linne, a Swedish botanist, who established botanical classification in 1753. Linnaeus classified the coffee plant into a new genus, the Coffea, with just one known species: Coffea Arabica.
Arabica coffee in history