The Age Of Reason And Coffee In The 17th Century

In Europe the early 17th-century saw a whole new era of philosophical discussion which steadily came to be known as the Age of Reason or Age of Rationalism, widely regarded as the precursor to be the early form of modern philosophy. Gone was the earlier understanding of the Renaissance an in it's place all forms of rational inquiry was now the vogue. 
 

In England the very first coffee house to be opened was situated in Oxford in 1652.  It quickly came to earn a reputation of a place of disrepute; for what gentleman would stoop to shops of clamor and argument over a drink with no less a reputation than a sordid glass of alcoholic beverage. Coffee had at once become l'enfant terrible! Yet, tastes can become cultured.  In London, in that very same year, another coffee house was opened at St Michael’s Alley, Cornhill, by a Greek gentleman Pasqua Roseé amidst a great deal of controversy. Local tavern keepers offering alcoholic beverages were quite literally aghast that almost 600 cups of the black devilish brew were being sold every single day! Thus a culture of coffee enthusiasm was growing fast and unbounded by popular opinions.

By 1656, there was a second coffee house that had opened at the sign of the rainbow on Fleet Street and by 1663 indeed there were no fewer than 82 coffee houses with thriving custom in London alone. “Black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love”, said an old Turkish proverb. yet, that did stop an insatiable demand as a thriving London coffee mores quickly became established, whose manners inspired heated debate and discussion on almost every topic form God to nature, to finances to politics. 

The arrival of the London coffee culture, first and foremost in a newly enlightened Europe, coincided with the dawn of reasoning that laid the foundations for the English economy to  growth, compete and innovate in the decades to come. London coffee houses were the sources of inspiration for the organization of the stock exchange, the currency markets the insurance industry, the banking industry, commodity trading and auctioneering. At the forefront of the new English economy and its lieberal rational mind was the 17th-century coffee houses that ignited a new era of global trade and financial domination and prosperity for Great Britain.

The property of genius and sources of inspiration brewed at the very heart of the English Industrial Revolution and the birth of a future Empire. From the darkest house of clamor and ill-repute, men's minds huddled over the darkest of brews, in pensive reflection, were unleashed upon a new age of mercantile, scientific and political expansion. 

Pieter Bergli - cafe narrator and enthusiast...

historical narrations and commentaries upon the properties of coffee and the chapters of human ingenuity.