Coffee plotting

This extension of my blog to further consider the place and influence of the coffee-house was originally unintended till I suddenly remembered that I had read somewhere, sometime ago, that conspiracies and plotting over the French Revolution and the American Revolution had occurred in the coffee-houses of London, Paris, Boston among other gatherings. In fact, history appears to be steeped in ideas argued over cups of coffee, so I delved deeper.

The first coffee-houses in the Ottoman Empire provided spaces for Muslims to socialise; they could not frequent taverns or drink alcohol but cafes became commonplace; alternative places to socialise and

An early Turkish Coffee House

gather together, based on affordability with, chiefly, egalitarian access. After the murder of the brother and uncle of Sultan Murad 1V, reputedly by janissaries** who frequented coffee-houses, he decreed that coffee-drinking was a capital offence and subsequent Sultans issued and retracted coffee-house bans well into the eighteenth century. So, controversy accompanied even the earliest of coffee-houses.[** members of the Sultan's Guard]

An arena for important discussion.
Note a woman serving coffee to the left

My previous coffee blog mentioned the first coffee-house in London opened by Pasqua Rosee in 1652 and the point was made that, at that time, women were not allowed to frequent these places, though they sometimes worked there. I had not considered that the general layout and ethos of the coffee-house with its communal table littered with newspapers and periodicals, meant egalitarian male access via a cheap cup of coffee, to enter discussions with educated and informed men. This enabled public consideration of the then-current political, social and religious ideas; heady stuff in the rigidly structured atmosphere of hierarchical England.

The English Civil War [1642-1651}, in reality, a succession of smaller, often regional, linked wars, had resulted in the end of the monarchy with the decapitation of King Charles 1. In 1666, his son, Charles 11 was able to restore the monarchy following the end of the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell on his death, and as King, Charles remained understandably wary of widespread political discussion. In June 1672 he issued a proclamation to Restrain the Spreading of False News …whereby “men have assumed to themselves a liberty, not only in Coffee-houses, but in other Places and Meetings, to censure and defame the proceedings of the State by speaking evil of things they understand not.” His Secretary of State, Sir Joseph Williamson then instituted a network of spies in London’s coffee-houses which lead briefly to the threatened closure of ALL coffee-houses in London by 10th January 1676. Uproar ensued following this pronouncement, and discontent loomed large. Many important and powerful men not only frequented and enjoyed coffee-houses but relied on them for their gathering of up-to-date news, events and information. The ban lasted 11 days only and Charles withdrew, never challenging the legitimacy and power of the Coffee House clientele again!

In his diaries, Samuel Pepys recorded many of the stimulating conversations

Grecian Coffee House where
Whigs and Royal Society members met.

he enjoyed joining or overhearing in the coffee-houses he frequented. Often, in London, many coffee-houses catered for a specific clientele. The Grecian Coffee House near Fleet Street, was where Whigs met, together with members of the Royal Society like Isaac Newton. Poets and writers gathered at Will’s Coffee House including John Dryden, Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. Stockbrokers congregated at Jonathan’s Coffee House in Exchange Alley after official hours, to trade shares leading, eventually, to the establishment of the London Stock Exchange while the Lloyd’s Coffee House provided a hub for sailors and merchants which progressed to the creation of the Lloyds of London insurance company. But the open discussion the King feared, led to a burst of new ideas during the Enlightenment when people began to question traditional ideas about religion, politics and society, emphasising reason, logic and scientific discovery.

Frederick the Great of Prussia

One hundred years later, another King, Frederick the Great of Germany was revealed as a Royal opponent of coffee and he attempted to ban the drink in favour of beer on September 13th 1777. He required all coffee sellers to register with the Crown in an endeavour to prevent the

Coffee sniffers at work

importation of coffee which affected the country’s business profits including his. Short-sightedly, coffee licences were then denied to all but a favourite few while ‘sniffers’, ex-soldiers, were employed to roam the streets in search of contraband coffee roasters The King had strong opinions recorded in a letter of 1799 decrying the extent of coffee consumption and urging an artificial limit so that people could resume drinking ‘beer soup’ which was ‘much healthier than coffee’.

The Boston Tea Party 16/12/1773

In the Colonies, coffee was seen as a patriotic drink, particularly after the Boston Tea Party on December 16th 1773 when the anti-British tax party, the Sons of Liberty, destroyed an entire shipment of tea, taxed by the British and carried by the powerful East India Company. This cargo of tea represented a violation of their colonists’ rights and caused the famous

insurrectionist American slogan of ‘No taxation without representation’.

Green Dragon Tavern, Boston. 1890s

American taverns served coffee alongside beer and whisky and the Green Dragon Tavern in Boston was referred to as the Headquarters of the Revolution by Daniel Webster for accommodating the Sons of
Liberty in numerous meetings leading up to and during the Revolutionary War. Meanwhile the Merchants’ Coffee House in New York was a hub of patriots anxious to break free from George 111 and this intense coffee-house activity eventually generated the foundation by merchants of the Bank of New York and the reorganisation of the New York Chamber of Commerce.

Cafe de Foy, still there in
Montparnasse today

Parisian coffee Houses were more egalitarian than the British and offered a perfect atmosphere for pre-Revolutionary dissent and mutiny. As a French Royalist opined, “...a crowd of minor clerks and lawyers, … unknown writers, starving scribblers who go about rabble-rousing in clubs and cafes” set the mobs alight and “forge the weapons with which the masses are armed today.” Indeed, during this frantic period, the Cafe de Foy hosted the call to arms for the storming of the Bastille. This was a pivotal moment in the French Revolution [14/07/1789] when revolutionary insurgents seized control of the mediaeval armoury, the prison and the fortress, known collectively as the Bastille. The Revolution was the violent result of a multitude of ongoing social, economic and political crises; none caused by the Coffee Houses but certainly amplified and magnified by the agitators who gathered therein and seized their moment.

After the ferment of the Revolution, eventually the Parisian cafes and coffee houses resumed their earlier tranquillity providing sanctuary and stimulus for creative writers and philosophers with famous names like Apollinaire and Andre Breton at Cafe de Flore; Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitxgerald and T.S.Eliot at La Rotonde and later Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre using Cafe de Flore in Saint Germain as their all-day workplace fortified with the occasional coffee and lunch.