London Coffeehouse or Parisian Café?

AbstractIn this chapter, I compare the different trajectories of the development of the Parisian café and the earlier London coffeehouse, in conjunction with the introduction and transmission of the coffee habit in England and France. Despite the circulation of ideas through the intelligentsia, diplomats, and merchants, it took an extra forty years for the French café to appear in Paris. I consider the role of the Franco-Ottoman political relationship, commercial diplomacy, and the mythical influence of Turkish diplomatic envoy, Soliman Aga, in communicating coffee culture to Parisian nobles. I explore how the café in late-seventeenth-century France is a representation of grandeur of the State, and why the English model of the coffeehouse did not succeed in France.Key words: coffeehouse, café, early modern, autarky, grandeur …we may, with no less truth than plainness, give this brief character of a wellregulated coffee-house (for our pen disdains to be an advocate for any sordid holes, that assume that name to cloak the practice of debauchery), that it is the sanctuary of health, the nursery of temperance, the delight of frugality, an academy of civility, and free-school of ingenuity.Anon., Coffee-houses vindicated, 1675In some of these houses they talk news; in others, they play draughts. There is one where they prepare the coffee in such a manner that it inspires the drinkers of it with wit; at least, of all those who frequent it, there is not one person in four who does not think he has more wit after he has entered that house. But what offends me in these wits is that they do not make themselves useful to their country.Montesquieu, Persian Letters, 1721When coffee first appeared in England and France in the first half of the seventeenth century, observers in both places did not describe the drink as intrinsically enjoyable. Despite these reservations of the palate, this unknown beverage imported from Yemen rapidly became the fashionable beverage of choice across much of Europe. Unpleasant in taste, foreign in origin, with potentially enervating physiological effects, how did coffee overcome these obstacles to gain acceptance in England and France? In what ways did the institutions of sociability constructed around the consumption of coffee outside the home play a role in its acceptance?