WI: Mate as popular as coffee

My Malayalee friend drinks lots and lots of coffee. The only time I drink the stuff is over at his house. I say that's why he is short! :)

I'm Malayalee and I'm 6'2". Obviously it's not the coffee :D

But yeah, Malayalees pretty much live on a combination of coffee and pent-up hatred for all other types of Indians :D
 

Hendryk

Banned
So, there's speculation in the other forum about removing tobacco from human history, and it brought back to mind this WI of mine about another American weed, though this one is ingested rather than inhaled.

409px-Mate_03_calabaza.jpg
 
Have pope Vincent III ban coffee instead of accepting it. Coffee was believed by some Christians to be the devil's drink. Pope Vincent III heard this and decided to taste it before he banished it. He enjoyed it so much he baptized it, saying "coffee is so delicious it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it." Have him like the taste of coffee a little less and there is your excuse for no coffee. Now having mate replace tea in the western world is the problem. And don't think it isn't possible, until Vatican II all Catholics did not eat meat on any friday, and a lot didn't eat it on wensdays either. just have the church tradition of no coffee exsist unti lthe present day.
 

Hendryk

Banned
Have him like the taste of coffee a little less and there is your excuse for no coffee.
I don't necessarily want to make coffee less popular; I want maté to be more popular. Leo was on to something when he suggested having the Jesuits popularize the drink. It would be interesting to see it catch on in the Levant and spread East from there, but there's also the possibility of the Jesuits introducing the drink in the various Catholic courts of Europe, where it would become yet another fad like chocolate; from there, it would be picked up by the upper classes and then the bourgeoisie. By the 19th century one could imagine a division of Europe between the Protestant tea-drinkers and the Catholic maté-drinkers.
 
I don't necessarily want to make coffee less popular; I want maté to be more popular. Leo was on to something when he suggested having the Jesuits popularize the drink. It would be interesting to see it catch on in the Levant and spread East from there, but there's also the possibility of the Jesuits introducing the drink in the various Catholic courts of Europe, where it would become yet another fad like chocolate; from there, it would be picked up by the upper classes and then the bourgeoisie. By the 19th century one could imagine a division of Europe between the Protestant tea-drinkers and the Catholic maté-drinkers.

Another possible consequence is that the Plata basin would become much wealthier than OTL, with erva-mate taking the place of coffee or tobbaco. But I believe it's not good news to the Guarany and the Jesuits. This wealth would make Spain and Portugal taking and colonising the lands there even strongly than OTL.
 
The Dutch get a taste for it from their South American colonies and starts Yerba plantations in the New World. The VOC cultivate it in Java and Ceylon. They make some in-roads selling it to the British as a lower cost competitor to Chinese tea. The savings come from the shorter sailing distances invovled. The Portugese too, plant yerba in their colonies to cash in on the yerba tea trade.

After Ceylon was brought under British control in 1796, the British East India company promoted Ceylon yerba. In time mate became as British as Earl Grey.

Dutch and Portugese yerba sales in the American colonies unintentionally received a boom after Parliament passed the Townsend Acts which placed heavy tax on tea.
 
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The Dutch get a taste for it from their South American colonies and starts Yerba plantations in the New World. The VOC cultivate it in Java and Ceylon. They make some in-roads selling it to the British as a lower cost competitor to Chinese tea. The savings come from the shorter sailing distances invovled. The Portugese too, plant yerba in their colonies to cash in on the yerba tea trade.

After Ceylon was brought under British control in 1796, the British East India company promoted Ceylon yerba. In time mate became as British as Earl Grey.

Dutch and Portugese yerba sales in the American colonies unintentionally received a boom after Parliament passed the Townsend Acts which placed heavy tax on tea.

It's possible, but I think mate wasn't grown by natives of any of the Dutch colonies in South America. Of course, there were Dutch merchants in Brazil and in the Rio de La Plata, so maybe they can take them from there to their colonies
 
It's possible, but I think mate wasn't grown by natives of any of the Dutch colonies in South America. Of course, there were Dutch merchants in Brazil and in the Rio de La Plata, so maybe they can take them from there to their colonies

Indeed, the Dutch only had colonies in Pernambuco and Guiana, where obviously mate doesn't grow. Even if they conquer some point in the southern coast it would not help, because the trees doesn't grow near to the sea. They would need to establish some relation with the Guarany to take the leaves from the countryside.
 
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