Uncommon Grounds by Mark
Pendergrast, 1999, Excerpts
As coffee gained in popularity throughout the sixteenth century,
it also gained its reputation as a troublemaking social brew. Various rulers
decided that people were having too much fun in the coffeehouses. In 1511 the
coffeehouses of Mecca were forcibly closed. Constantinople, fearing sedition,
closed the city‘s coffeehouses. Offenders found imbibing a second time were
sewn into leather bags and thrown into the Bosporus.
Why did coffee drinking persist in the face of persecution
in these early Arab societies? The addictive nature of caffeine provides one
answer, of course; yet there is more to it. Coffee provided an intellectual
stimulant, a pleasant way to feel increased energy without any apparent ill
effects. Coffeehouses allowed people to get together for conversation,
entertainment, and business, inspiring agreements, poetry, and irreverence in
equal measure. Unlike rowdy beer halls, the cafes provided a place for lively
conversation and mental concentration.
Coffee aided considerably in the sobering of an
alcohol-soaked Europe and provided a social and intellectual catalyst as well.
As William Ukers wrote in the classic All About Coffee, “Whenever it has been
introduced it has spelled revolution. It has been the world’s most radical
drink in that its function has always been to make people think. And when the
people began to think, they became dangerous to tyrants.”
By 1777 the hot beverage had become entirely too popular for
Frederick the Great, who issued a manifesto in favor of Germany’s more
traditional drink: “It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of
coffee used by my subjects, and the like amount of money that goes out of the
country in consequence. My people must drink beer. His majesty was brought up
on beer, and so were his ancestors.”
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