Coffee reached Venice about 1615, and Marseilles about 1644. The French began importing coffee in commercial quantities in 1660. The Dutch began to import Mocha coffee regularly at Amsterdam in 1663; and by 1679 the French had developed a considerable trade in the berry between the Levant and the cities of Lyons and Marseilles. Meanwhile, the coffee drink had become fashionable in Paris, partly through its use by the Turkish ambassador, and the first Parisian café was opened in 1672. It is significant of its steady popularity since then that the name café, which is both French and Spanish for coffee, has come to mean a general eating or drinking place.
BILL OF PUBLIC SALE OF COFFEE, ETC., 1790
Reproduction of an advertisement by the Dutch East India Company
Active trading in coffee began in Germany about 1670, and in Sweden about 1674.
Trading in coffee in England followed swiftly upon the heels of the opening of the first coffee house in London in 1652. By 1700, the trade included not only exporting and importing merchants, but wholesale and retail dealers; the latter succeeding the apothecaries who, up to then, had enjoyed a kind of monopoly of the business.
Trade and literary authorities[318] on coffee trading tell us that in the early days of the eighteenth century the chief supplies of coffee for England and western Europe came from the East Indies and Arabia. The Arabian, or—as it was more generally known—Turkey berry, was bought first-hand by Turkish merchants, who were accustomed to travel inland in Arabia Felix, and to contract with native growers.
It was moved thence by camel transport through Judea to Grand Cairo, via Suez, to be transhipped down the Nile to Alexandria, then the great shipping port for Asia and Europe. By 1722, 60,000 to 70,000 bales of Turkish (Arabian) coffee a year were being received in England, the sale price at Grand Cairo being fixed by the Bashaw, who "valorized" it according to the supply. "Indian" coffee, which was also grown in Arabia, was brought to Bettelfukere (Beit-el-fakih) in the mountains of southwestern Arabia, where English, Dutch, and French factors went to buy it and to transport it on camels to Moco (Mocha), whence it was shipped to Europe around the Cape of Good Hope.