# Dutch Java Coffee Challenges Yemen's Monopoly (c. 1719)

URL: https://allhistories.com/yemen/timeline/1719-dutch-java-coffee-challenges-yemen-s-monopoly
Location: Mocha, with plantations in Java
Themes: Coffee, Global trade

By about 1719 the Dutch East India Company was able to supply Europe with Java coffee, undermining the near-monopoly of Yemen. The Dutch had begun cultivating coffee in Ceylon in 1658 and later concentrated on Java, using plants first obtained from Mocha. The date of the plant transfer from Mocha is not given in the source used. Until the end of the seventeenth century, Mocha had been the world's sole gateway for coffee, and Yemen the principal producer. Accounts of the Qasimid state say Europeans smuggled coffee trees out of Yemen in the first half of the eighteenth century and planted them in their colonies, ending the monopoly, while the history of coffee refers to Dutch cultivation and a legend of Baba Budan taking beans to India. Competition from plantations lowered Yemen's share of the market. In the early nineteenth century, Somali merchants from Berbera and Ethiopian coffee further weakened Mocha, and later the trade shifted to Aden. Coffee had become a global crop grown outside Yemen, and the Qasimid State account dates the end of the monopoly to the first half of the eighteenth century. At this point in the timeline (c. 1719), the Qasimi imamate was under Imam Al-Mutawakkil al-Qasim (1718 – 1727).

## Why it matters
The end of the monopoly removed the main source of Yemen's commercial wealth and weakened the Qasimi state.

Ruler at the Time: [Al-Mutawakkil al-Qasim](https://allhistories.com/yemen/rulers/al-mutawakkil-al-qasim)

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — History of coffee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coffee)
- [Wikipedia — Qasimid State](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qasimid_State)
- [Wikipedia — Mocha, Yemen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mocha,_Yemen)