You Know What Caffeine Does To The Brain

You Know How It Spread Across Continents And Survived Every Attempt To Ban It

What You Don't Know Is That The Drink In Your Cup Built The Institutions That Run Your Life

Not As A Metaphor

As Literal History

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OKAY BACK FROM THE COFFEEHOUSE 📜

The English Coffeehouse Opened In Oxford In 1650

Within The Decade, It Had Spread To London

By 1700, London Had More Than Two Thousand Coffeehouses

The City Had Fewer Than Six Hundred Thousand Residents

That Is Roughly One Coffeehouse For Every Three Hundred People

A Density Of Public Intellectual Space That London Has Not Matched Since

The Coffeehouse Was Built Around A Single Rule

You Paid A Penny To Enter

You Could Sit Anywhere

Not At A Reserved Table By Birth Or Income

Anywhere

A Merchant And A Laborer Could Occupy The Same Bench

A Scientist And A Tradesman Could Argue About The Same Newspaper

This Was Not Ordinary

English Public Life Before Coffeehouses Was Almost Entirely Organized By Class

You Drank At The Tavern With People Of Your Station

You Worshipped With Your Parish

Strangers From Different Social Tiers Did Not Naturally Share Space

The Coffeehouse Created The First Infrastructure For What We Now Call

The Public Sphere

A Space Where Opinion Circulates

Arguments Are Tested

Ideas Survive On The Quality Of The Evidence Rather Than The Rank Of The Speaker

Caffeine Made It Possible To Sustain This For Hours

Alcohol Had Created Different Rooms

Caffeine Created Something That Required Sobriety To Function

Lloyd's Of London, One Of The Most Powerful Insurance Markets In The World

Began As A Coffeehouse

Edward Lloyd's Coffee Shop On Tower Street Was Where Ship Owners And Merchants Met To Assess Maritime Risk

The Practice Of Underwriting Insurance Happened At Those Tables

Over Those Drinks

The London Stock Exchange Began As Jonathan's Coffee House

Traders Gathered There To Buy And Sell Shares

The Informal Practice Became The Formal Institution

The Gossip Press, The Ancestor Of The Modern Newspaper

Began In Coffeehouses

Newsletters Were Read Aloud

Rumors Were Traded

Specific Coffeehouses Became Associated With Specific Industries

Artists Went To One

Merchants To Another

Politicians To A Third

Maps Emerged From Those Rooms

Insurance Markets, Stock Trading, Political Journalism, Scientific Societies, Literary Culture

None Of This Was Designed

It Emerged From Putting Caffeinated Strangers In The Same Room And Letting Them Stay As Long As They Wanted

The Period From Roughly 1650 To 1800 Is Called The Enlightenment

The Era In Which Reason, Science, And Individual Rights Became The Organizing Framework For Western Thought

It Produced The Foundations Of Modern Democracy, Scientific Method, And Constitutional Law

It Also Coincided Almost Exactly With The Expansion Of Coffeehouses Across Europe

This Is Not A Coincidence In The Mystical Sense

It Is A Coincidence In The Logistical Sense

The Enlightenment Required A Specific Infrastructure

A Space Where Educated People Could Argue In Public

Across Class Lines, In A State Of Sobriety, For Sustained Periods

The Coffeehouse Was That Space

Caffeine Made Sustained Argument Possible

The Penny Admission Made Cross Class Access Possible

The Absence Of Required Alcohol Made Coherent Reasoning Possible

Voltaire Reportedly Drank Forty Cups Of Coffee Per Day

Whether Or Not That Number Is Accurate

The People Building The Intellectual Framework That Would Become

The Modern World Were Caffeinated And Considered This Unremarkable

Everyone Was Doing It

The Molecule You Drink Every Morning Is The Same Molecule They Used To Invent The World You Live In

That Has Never Been In The Branding