Coffee-houses contributed to the political and literary life during the 18th and 19th centuries?
List three activities, aside from drinking coffee, that happened in London coffee-houses during this time period.. what is your opinion?
June 22, 2010 | Filed Under Coffee
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They were a new way to congregate, meet people and smoke (those long, white clay pipes in the 17th and 18th centuries!) and drink.
Men could transact business there, share news and gossip. They served also as meeting places.
In Victorian England (19th century) coffee houses were set up by the temperance movement "for the working classes, as a place of relaxation free of alcohol, an alternative to the public house (pub)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffeehouse#History
In France, "Pasqua Rosée also established Paris’ first coffeehouse in 1672 and held a city-wide coffee monopoly until Procopio Cutò opened the Café Procope in 1686. This coffeehouse still exists today and was a major meeting place of the French Enlightenment; Voltaire, Rousseau, and Denis Diderot frequented it, and it is arguably the birthplace of the Encyclopédie, the first modern encyclopedia."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffeehouse#History
http://www.koffeekorner.com/koffeehistory.htm (timeline)
http://coffee.suite101.com/article.cfm/coffeehouse_history
My opinion? I’ve never really thought about it, except for an interest in history and the beginnings of coffee as a popular drink. We seem, here in the UK, to have been undergoing a bit of a change in the flowering of coffeehouses like Starbuck’s, etc, especially as we’re more of a nation of tea-drinkers!