Over the last month, I’ve been reading Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants and Intoxicants by Wolfgang Schivelbusch.  It sat in my bookcase for a while, unread, and then last fall I listened to a webcast about enlightened communication where the organizer began the program connecting enlightened communication to the conversations that arose in coffeehouses in 17th century England and France. I decided to see what this book had to say.

In Tastes of Paradise, Schivelbusch writes about the links between new foods brought to Europe through trade with the Middle East, the Far East and the Americas.  He covers the effects that pepper, coffee, tea, chocolate, tobacco, beer, hard liquor and opium had on European culture from the 17th through 19th centuries.

The most interesting and compelling substance that Schivelbusch writes about is coffee, which was introduced through the Middle East into several ports:  Venice, Marseilles, London, and Amsterdam.  Coffee was a medicinal food before the 15th century.  It wasn’t till this time that Islamic cultures roasted, ground and brewed the beans into the bitter drink we know today. It was quickly adopted by the non-alcoholic drinking Islamic culture.

I want to focus in on how the Bourgeois of England and France were ripe to adopt coffee as their drink of choice and how the mindset of the early Enlightenment was supported by coffee, which was a stark difference from the previous drink of choice: ale, beer and wine.  According to Schivelbusch, before the introduction of the potato, beer and ale represented the second most consumed foods in central and northern Europe. These drinks played an important role in the demonstration of loyalty and friendship through drinking contests and toasts. Men gathered to compete at drinking and worked themselves into a frenetic state from cheering and glass raising.  In the book, there are many illustrations showing the height of tavern inebriation, including a drinker depicted with the head of an animal, vomiting, and Demon Alcohol in the background orchestrating the events.

The introduction of coffee was seen as a soberer of an alcohol dependent society.  The overconsumption of alcohol in taverns was associated with incompetence and laziness.  The Protestant Reformation spurred the criticism of alcohol and its customs.  Coffee was welcomed by the English especially as an illuminator, a substance to wake up humanity,  “…Coffee, the sober drink, the mighty nourishment of the brain, which unlike other spirits, heightens purity and lucidity; coffee, which clears the clouds of the imagination and their gloomy weight; which illuminates the reality of things suddenly with a flash of truth…”

It’s interesting how coffee was first utilized by different strata of society too.  The Aristocracy enjoyed coffee for its superficial accouterments—the porcelain cups and coffee pot, the particular way to drink it—but the middle class valued coffee for its practical aspects. It was seen to stimulate the intellect, support an increasing shift to indoor, mental labor in an office, and extension of the work day.

Coffee also became the official drink of the emerging capitalist economy. In England, circa 1700, there were roughly 3,000 coffeehouses in London alone, which works out to about one for every 200 people.  Initially, these were places where merchants and insurance brokers gathered to discuss business, but increasingly became places to discuss art, politics and literature.  Coffeehouse etiquette was the opposite of Tavern behavior.

Coffee is interesting to me for two reasons:

• As a study into the role that food has on culture. Did coffee itself stimulate the Age of Enlightenment, or did the rational thinking of the Enlightenment lead to new patterns of consumption? Although it’s a bit of a chicken/egg question, the latter is more true. Europeans’ desire to create a new culture spurred the coffeehouse as a new gathering place and the coffeehouses in turn encouraged a culture of dialogue which influenced literature, philosophy, art and politics.
• As background for an inquiry into the relationship that we have with food today.  From personal experience, I can see that the more physically fit I become, the less I want to eat very heavy foods, meat and carbs.  This is true for many of us who want to develop our physical health and are changing our food consumption patterns.  I’m looking for major shifts in our culture about the way we eat.  What is emerging in our consciousness that would be supported and positively enhanced by something concrete?  Will it come from certain foods or certain ways of eating?  I don’t know and I’m interested in finding out.