Coffee is something we don’t associate with the British very much, instead focusing on the popular image of a poncy Brit sipping on a cup of tea. But it once had a fairly influential effect on the country in the 1600s and forwards. Coffeehouses in particular. The coffee may not have been grand, but for men with too much time and lots of opinions about every subject out there, there was no better place to spend your day. Among intellectual men interested in discussing politics, social rights, and philosophical debates over a cup.
As this new scene for social interaction grew, so it did in books and literature as well. It even encouraged the newspaper genre to grow. Papers, pamphlets and other sorts of newsletters became a popular way to keep conversation growing and to get ideas out there.
Coffeehouses in London, and really throughout Europe in the 18th century were the place to be. It was the center of most intellectual debates and was were many would meet to conspire social reform. It even worried Charles II so greatly he called them “places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers”.
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There are two maps in this part. The first is the interactive map with different coffeehouses in London that the locations can actually still be tracked down. Many of these early coffeehouses’ business became the modern-day central area for that business.
View Coffee Shops in a larger map
This second map is of modern London that has an overlay with an earlier map with the location of many of the original coffeehouses. Lloyd’s being the oldest known dating back to 1625. Their locations are pretty centralized.
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There are two articles I’m showing here. Both are from a newspaper that was circulated within these coffeehouses. I thought it was a good example of not only how information was spread in coffeehouses, but the types of ideas brewing within them and in the people. These were centers for intellectual thought after all.
The topmost is the older article, coming from the first article of the first volume in 1711. The interesting factor to note is that within the 13 footnotes available, 7 spoke directly of coffeehouses that were frequented. He described each as a location for different sorts of habits and trade, some less appealing than others.
Its easy to note certain things that changed, but to me, the significant part is in how the earlier essay focused more on persons and self-improvement, the second has large words such as “World” and “Understanding”. The themes are growing more worldwide as Britain did and so interests within these coffeehouses grew as well.
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This n-gram was inspired by Coffee: It’s History, Cultivation, and Uses, by Robert Hewitt, 1872 that made notice to a late arrival of the coffee importance to the US colonies; I decided to expand my language choice for this chart. A search of coffeehouse in general showed an initial spiked interest in 1600 with a long lull before the British industrial revolution, which had Britain trading like mad again, has the cheap drink rising to fame.
I made a search for the word ‘coffee’ and ‘tea’ through the English search this time. The graph shows exactly how interested people had become in coffee starting around 1620 and rising to beat Tea for a short number of years. It coincides with the importation values of tea vs. coffee in the 1700s. Back to the articles I had brought up, the first is from the first real descent where tea once again rises to beat coffee and the second is just about where it nearly hits non-existence again.
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This just is just a continuation of showing the difference between tea and coffee and like the n-gram, it shows a great rise and then a lovely plummeting by the 1720s.
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This last chart is a relative chart of the sources of the Coffee Importation. This does not account for coffee later sent out of England, but it gives a good idea of where it all comes from. Coffee and coffeehouses in general were all a part of the result of British expansionism and I feel like nothing else on this blog shows this quite as well.
Coffee is a drink meant for a social environment. Its meant to be enjoyed in a dark, warm place where people can talk about all sorts of ideas. Its a feeling that Starbucks in our modern age tries to recreate in their shops (though not very effectively as most people these days are just trying to run in and out). But in the 17th and into the 18th century is when coffeehouses had their glory and an important role in business, trade, education, and general lifestyle of a regular person.
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As a final note, how to preserve this?
Well okay, you’ll need some string, a paperclip, definitely some duct tape… or maybe just a really nice server rented by the month.
Part of keeping this preserved is to keep this in its digital state. Without it being online, the interactive map means nothing and the links would all have to be printed and lose their original form. So, keeping it on a website would be the way to go. Maybe making it a wiki of sorts, allowing more people to update and change it without restrictions. It would definitely help in getting more information and maybe a better map with more markings. That’s really the true reason to keep it available, right? To let one piece of knowledge grow into something bigger.
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References:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12030/12030-h/SV1/Spectator1.html
Coffee: It’s History, Cultivation, and Uses, by Robert Hewitt, 1872
The Social Life of Coffee, the Emegence of the British Coffeehouse, Brian Cowan
