The Politics of Coffeehouses
Dissent and Caffeine Have Long Gone Hand in Hand
The humble coffee bean has been brewed and enjoyed since at least the ninth century, and in the United States today a large majority of the population starts the morning with a steaming cup or three. Coffee’s popularity is likely a function of its stimulating properties, which may also account for the unmistakable political dimension that has always characterized establishments that sell it.
Early Coffeehouses in the Middle East
The first coffeehouse opened in Istanbul in 1457. Coffee had been drunk in the Middle East for centuries, and coffeehouses soon became popular gathering places where men would drink coffee or tea, of course, but also sit and read, listen to readings, or play chess. The men also tended to discuss politics, and it is here that the establishments first began falling foul of the authorities, a trend that would continue almost to the present day. In the city of Mecca, coffeehouses were actually banned from 1512 to 1524, but crackdowns by the powers that be were not sufficient to stop the proliferation; starting from 1530, coffeehouses spread throughout the Middle East, finding their greatest foothold in Cairo.
Coffeehouses in Europe
In 1645, Venice was a thriving seaport, the main point of communication between Europe and the Byzantine world. Therefore it is not surprising that the first European coffeehouse opened there. Church authorities were quick to condemn this new business, calling coffee an “infidel drink,” but as the Pope apparently enjoyed his java, the coffeehouses operated with little interference. Paris was also an early adopter; by 1789 there were at least 900 of them in the city. The most famous of these is the Café Procope, which was frequented by Voltaire and Denis Diderot, and still operates today on the Left Bank.
It was only in Germany that coffeehouse culture got a slow start; the government there discouraged coffee drinking because importing it caused trade deficits. By 1781 Berlin had only a paltry 12 coffeehouses. Other parts of Germany were a different story: Hamburg, because of its ties with England via the Hanover Dynasty, embraced coffeehouses, and in Liepzig some coffeehouses began adding small concert halls, thus becoming the only places in the city where one could hear secular music performed in public.
English Coffeehouses
England was perhaps the most fervent in its passion for coffeehouses. The first opened in Oxford in 1650, and the number of them exploded shortly thereafter. London was the epicenter of the craze; before the end of the 17th century, there were over 2,000 coffeehouses in that city alone.
Just as in other parts of Europe, stern critics of coffeehouses were legion. Some women’s and religious groups claimed that coffee drinking dried up men’s semen. Monarchists derided coffeehouses as “foreign” and hotbeds of freethinking. Supporters of the crown preferred the social culture surrounding pubs, where patrons bought rounds of ale, toasted to the king’s good health, and busied themselves with getting drunk and cavorting with prostitutes. In contrast, coffeehouse patrons, wired and wakeful, gathered together to read newspapers, discuss important issues, and cause headaches for the ruling elite. Apparently the coffeehouses became such a thorn in the side of the monarchy that Charles II tried unsuccessfully to close them down.
Coffeehouses and Enlightenment Values
Because of their largely egalitarian atmosphere (despite the widespread barring of women) and access to free newspapers, coffeehouses became in many ways centers of Enlightenment thinking. Open discussion and questioning were encouraged, and this intellectual freedom soon evolved from reading and discussing the works of others to writing one’s own essays and articles. Indeed, some coffeehouses had letterboxes out front where anyone could submit writings of his own, and after a while a whole network of coffeehouse publishing formed. The two best-known examples of this were the Tattler and Spectator newspapers, which compiled ideas, writings and discussions from various coffeehouses in Europe and disseminated them to other coffeehouses in the network. In this way the coffeehouses became a sort of alternative media, a way to obtain information not filtered through a monarchical lens. It was likely this sense of anti-authoritarianism that attracted artists, writers and philosophers to coffeehouses throughout the years, even into the 20th century, when coffeehouses became associated with the countercultural Beat movement.
Additional Source:
Allen, Stewart Lee (2003). The Devil's Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee. Ballantine Books. ISBN: 0345441494
Coffeehouse in the Ottoman Empire
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A Paris Coffeehouse, 1870
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