Coffee houses did develop in the major ports and towns around britoin, norwich, bristol, york and so forth. The great dramatist and poet john dryden held court in in will's coffee house in covent garden. And then richard steele and joseph addison who kind of invented a genre which which put the coffee house on paper. They invented a thing called periodical literature. So that trice weekly, or regular er, not quite newspaper, but journal with an essay about an important issue.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history and social impact of coffee. From its origins in Ethiopia, coffea arabica spread through the Ottoman Empire before reaching Western Europe where, in the 17th century, coffee houses were becoming established. There, caffeinated customers stayed awake for longer and were more animated, and this helped to spread ideas and influence culture. Coffee became a colonial product, grown by slaves or indentured labour, with coffea robusta replacing arabica where disease had struck, and was traded extensively by the Dutch and French empires; by the 19th century, Brazil had developed into a major coffee producer, meeting demand in the USA that had grown on the waggon trails.
With
Judith Hawley
Professor of 18th Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London
Markman Ellis
Professor of 18th Century Studies at Queen Mary University of London
And
Jonathan Morris
Professor in Modern History at the University of Hertfordshire
Producer: Simon Tillotson