Coffee-Drinking as a Symbol of Social Change in Continental Europe in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

C offee-D rinking as a Sym bol o f Social C hange in C ontinental E urope in thezyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYX Seventeenth and E ighteenth C enturies P E T E R A L B R E C H T QPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA 1 he Europeans first discovered coffee and coffeehouses in Turkish dominions. Europe owes its first written account of coffee to Carolus Clusius [Charles L’Ecluse] (1526-1609). In Antwerp in 1574 Clusius pub­ lished an edited and modified version of a botanical work by Gracias ab Horto in which he reported on coffee and provided an illustration of its seed, barely recognizable, however. Alphonsus Pancius had sent him the seed from Ferrara.1 The Augsburg doctor Leonhard Rauwolf was the first to give an account of coffee based on his own experience. From May 1573 until February 1576 Rauwolf had traveled incognito through the Orient, at that time prohibited territory for European travelers.2 The first scientific illustration of a coffee bush and coffee seed is contained in a book by Prosper Alpinus first published in Venice in 1592? A series of reports on the subject followed, but for nearly a century only botanists, doctors and travelers to the Orient were interested in coffee. It was not until 1650 that Europeans really began to consume coffee, and a century later it was as well-known as the traditional drinks of wine and beer.4 One factor which contributed to the rapid spread of its popu­ larity was that coffee was the first foodstuff intended for human con­ sumption to be introduced (if not always welcomed) by a wide variety of publications. Both these publications and coffee itself first attracted attention among the educated members of the upper classes. 91 92 / QPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA A L B R E C H T Among the publications on coffee we find first those which provide general information about its origins, preparation, etc. Thus, in 1650 the first London cafe proprietor, Rosee, had a handbill printed announcing the various benefits to be derived from drinking coffee, and, of course, where this miraculous brew could be purchased. A very similar broad­ sheet was in circulation in Paris before 1666.5 There were also controver­ sial pamphlets dealing mostly with the question of whether or not coffee was good for the health, and about what should be the proper reaction to the new institution of the coffeehouse.6 Finally, in order to round off this short survey of “coffee literature,” there were many works published in which coffeehouses provided the setting, or in which the word “coffee­ house” on the title-page was meant to imply that the views being propa­ gated in the work were, in contemporary eyes, progressive.7 Lastly, there were plays and musical compositions dealing with coffee and coffee­ houses. Carlo Goldoni’s “La Bottega del Caffe” (Venice, 1750) and Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Kaffee-Kantate,” composed in 1732, are still famous today.8 Attention on this scale was attracted not just by the beverage coffee, but by the ideas and social behavior connected with it. To understand this it is necessary to take a look at social conditions in Europe under the ‘ancien regime.’ At the end of the Thirty Years’ War (1648) there was a general desire in many circles of society (and not just in Germany) to see a return to the “good old days.” Peace and order were the main objectives. For the great majority of Europeans this meant a lifelong remaining in the estate and condition into which they had been born, with no realistic chance of ever traveling beyond the narrow confines of their native regions. Life in a society structured according to the hierarchy of class, in which social barriers were legally sanctioned, and political rights reserved for the privileged few, meant in effect that life was lived in the context of strictly defined and segregated groups, and allowed little room for individual expression. Divisions resulted from birth —noble, burgher, peasant classes —as well as from professional status, religious confession, and place or country of birth. The behavioral norms of such a society clearly demanded that its members should value such distinctions and uphold the social demarcation...