by Tom Standage
Coffeehouses were centers of self-education, literary and philosophical speculation, commercial innovation, and, in some cases, political fermentation. But above all they were clearinghouses for news and gossip, linked by the circulation of customers, publications, and information from one establishment to the next. Collectively, Europe's coffeehouses functioned as the Internet of the Age of Reason.
Innovation and Speculation
The first coffeehouse in western Europe opened not in a center of trade or commerce but in the university city of Oxford, where a Lebanese man named Jacob set up shop in 1650, two years before Pasqua Rosee's London establishment. Although the connection between coffee and academia is now taken for granted—coffee is the drink customarily served in between sessions at academic conferences and symposia—it was initially controversial. When coffee became popular in Oxford and the coffeehouses selling it began to multiply, the university authorities tried to clamp down, worrying that coffeehouses promoted idleness and distracted members of the university from their studies. Anthony Wood, a chronicler of the time, was among those who denounced the enthusiasm for the new drink. "Why doth solid and serious learning decline, and few or none follow it now in the university?" he asked. "Answer: Because of coffee-houses, where they spend all their time." But coffee's opponents could not have been more wrong, for coffeehouses became popular venues for academic discussion, particularly among those who took an interest in the progress of science, or "natural philosophy" as it was known at the time. Far from discouraging intellectual activity, coffee actively promoted it. Indeed, coffeehouses were sometimes called "penny universities," since anyone could enter and join the discussion for a penny or two, the price of a dish of coffee. As one ditty of the time put it: "So great a Universitie, I think there ne'er was any; In which you may a Scholar be, for spending of a Penny."
One of the young men who acquired a taste for coffeehouse discussions while studying at Oxford was the English architect and scientist Christopher Wren. Chiefly remembered today as the architect of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, Wren was also one of the leading scientists of his day. He was a founding member of the Royal Society, Britain's pioneering scientific institution, which was formed in London in 1660. Its members, including Hooke, Pepys, and Edmond Halley (the astronomer after whom the comet is named), would often decamp to a coffeehouse after the society's meetings to continue their discussions. To give a typical example, on May 7, 1674, Hooke recorded in his diary that he demonstrated an improved form of astronomical quadrant at the Royal Society, and repeated his demonstration afterward at Garraway's coffeehouse, where he discussed it with John Flamsteed, an astronomer appointed by Charles II as the first astronomer royal the following year. In contrast with the formal atmosphere of the society's meetings, coffeehouses provided a more relaxed atmosphere which encouraged discussion, speculation, and exchange of ideas.
Hooke's diary gives examples of how information could be exchanged in coffeehouse discussions. At one meeting, at Man's coffeehouse, Hooke and Wren traded information about the behavior of springs. "Discoursed much about Demonstration of spring motion. He told a pretty thought of his about a poysd weather glass. . . . I told him an other. . . . I told him my philo-sophicall spring scales. . . . He told me his mechanick rope scale." On another occasion Hooke exchanged recipes for medical remedies with a friend at St. Dunstan's coffeehouse. Such discussions also allowed scientists to try out half-formed theories and ideas. Hooke, however, had a reputation for being boastful, argumentative, and overstating his case. After an argument with Hooke in Garraway's, Flamsteed complained that he had "long observed it is in his nature to make contradictions at randome, and with little judgmt, & to defend ym with unproved assertions." Hooke, claimed Flamsteed, "bore mee downe with wordes enough & psuaded the company that I was ignorant in these thinges which that hee onely understood not I."
But Hooke's coffeehouse boastfulness was the unwitting trigger for the publication of the greatest book of the Scientific Revolution. On a January evening in 1684, a coffeehouse discussion between Hooke, Halley, and Wren turned to the theory of gravity, the topic of much speculation at the time. Between sips of coffee, Halley wondered aloud whether the elliptical shapes of planetary orbits were consistent with a gravitational force that diminished with the inverse square of distance. Hooke declared that this was the case, and that the inverse-square law alone could account for the movement of the planets, something for which he claimed to have devised a mathematical proof. But Wren, who had tried and failed to produce such a proof himself, was unconvinced. Halley later recalled that Wren offered to "give Mr Hook or me 2 months time to bring him a convincing demonstration thereof, and besides the honour, he of us that did it, should have from him a present of a book of 40 shillings." Neither Halley nor Hooke took up Wren's challenge, however, and this prize went unclaimed.
A few months later Halley went to Cambridge, where he visited another scientific colleague, Isaac Newton. Recalling his heated coffeehouse discussion with Wren and Hooke, Halley asked Newton the same question: Would an inverse-square law of gravity give rise to elliptical orbits? Like Hooke, Newton claimed to have proved this already, though he could not find the proof when Halley asked to see it. After Halley's departure, however, Newton devoted himself to the problem. In November he sent Halley a paper which showed that an inverse-square law of gravity did indeed imply elliptical planetary orbits. But this paper, it turned out, was just a foretaste of what was to come. For Halley's question had given Newton the impetus he needed to formalize the results of many years of work, and to produce one of the greatest books in the history of science: Philosophiae natu-ralis principia mathematica (Mathematical principles of natural philosophy), generally known as the Principia. In this monumental work, published in 1687, Newton demonstrated how his principle of universal gravitation could explain the motions of both earthly and celestial bodies, from the (probably apocryphal) falling apple to the orbits of the planets. With the Principia, Newton at last provided a new foundation for the physical sciences to replace the discredited theories of the Greeks; he had made the universe submit to reason. Such was the impact of his work that Newton is widely regarded as the greatest scientist in history.
Hooke insisted that he had given Newton the idea of the inverse-square law in letters exchanged a few years earlier. But when he made his case in another coffeehouse discussion following the presentation of the first volume of the Principia to the Royal Society in June 1686, Hooke failed to convince his scientific colleagues. There was a world of difference between advancing an idea in a coffeehouse and proving its correctness; Hooke had not published his ideas or formally presented them to the society; and he had a reputation for claiming to have thought of everything before anyone else (though, in many cases, he actually had). "Being adjourned to the coffee-house," Halley wrote to Newton, "Mr Hooke did there endeavour to gain belief, that he had such thing by him, and that he gave you the first hint of this invention. But I found that they were all of the opinion, that . . . you ought to be considered as the inventor." Despite Hooke's protestations, the coffeehouse had given its verdict, which still stands today.
Toward the end of the seventeenth century, the dissemination of scientific knowledge through London's coffeehouses took on a new, more structured form. A series of lectures on mathematics was given at the Marine Coffee House, near St. Paul's, starting in 1698, after which coffeehouses became popular venues for lectures of increasing complexity. Equipped with the latest microscopes, telescopes, prisms, and pumps, James Hodgson, a former assistant of Flamsteed's, established himself as one of London's foremost popularizers of science. His course of lectures in natural philosophy promised to provide "the best and surest Foundation for all useful knowledge" and included demonstrations of the properties of gases, the nature of light, and the latest findings in astronomy and microscopy. Hodgson also gave private lessons and published a book about navigation. Similarly, the Swan Coffee-House in Threadneedle Street was the v
enue for lectures on mathematics and astronomy, while another coffeehouse, in Southwark, was owned by a family who taught mathematics, published books on navigation, and sold scientific instruments. Special lectures on astronomy were organized at both Button's coffeehouse and the Marine to coincide with an eclipse of the sun.
These lectures served both commercial and scientific interests. Seamen and merchants realized that science could contribute to improvements in navigation, and hence to commercial success, while the scientists were keen to demonstrate that their apparently esoteric findings had practical value. As one English mathematician observed in 1703, mathematics had become "the business of Traders, Merchants, Seamen, Carpenters, Surveyors of lands, or the like." Entrepreneurs and scientists teamed up to form companies to exploit new inventions and discoveries in navigation, mining, and manufacturing, paving the way for the Industrial Revolution. It was in coffeehouses that science and commerce became intertwined.
The coffeehouse spirit of innovation and experiment extended into the financial sphere too, giving rise to new business models in the form of innumerable novel variations on insurance, lottery, or joint-stock schemes. Of course, many of the ventures hatched in coffeehouses never got off the ground or were spectacular failures; the drama of the South Sea Bubble, a fraudulent investment scheme that collapsed in September 1720, ruining thousands of investors, was played out in coffeehouses such as Garraway's. But among the successful examples, the best known began in the coffeehouse opened in London in the late 1680s by Edward Lloyd. It became a meeting place for ship captains, shipowners, and merchants, who went to hear the latest maritime news and to attend auctions of ships and their cargoes. Lloyd began to collect and summarize this information, supplemented with reports from a network of foreign correspondents, in the form of a regular newsletter, initially handwritten and later printed and sent to subscribers. Lloyd's became the natural meeting place for shipowners and the underwriters who insured their ships. Some underwriters began to rent regular booths at Lloyd's, and in 1771 a group of seventy-nine of them collectively established the Society of Lloyds, which survives to this day as Lloyd's of London, the world's leading insurance market.
Coffeehouses also functioned as stockmarkets. Initially, stocks were traded alongside other goods at the Royal Exchange, but as the number of listed companies grew (rising from 15 to 150 during the 1690s) and trading activity increased, the government passed an act "to Restrain the Number and Practice of Brokers and Stockjobbers," imposing strict rules on stock trading within the exchange. In protest, the stockbrokers abandoned the exchange and moved into the coffeehouses in the surrounding streets, and one in particular: Jonathan's, in Exchange Alley. One broker's advertisement from 1695 reads: "John Castaing at Jonathan's Coffee House on Exchange, buys and sells all Blank and Benefit Tickets; and all other Stocks and Shares."
As the volume of trade grew, the drawbacks of the informal nature of coffeehouse trading became apparent. Brokers who defaulted on payment were prevented from entering Jonathan's; although there was no way to stop them trading elsewhere, banishment from Jonathan's meant a significant loss of business. Defaulters' names were written on a blackboard to prevent readmission a few months later. Nevertheless, problems remained, so in 1762 a group of 150 brokers struck an agreement with the proprietor of Jonathan's: In return for an annual subscription of eight pounds each, they would be granted use of the premises, with the right to exclude or expel untrustworthy brokers. But this scheme was successfully challenged by a banished broker, who argued that coffeehouses were public places that anyone should be able to enter. In 1773 a group of traders from Jonathan's broke away and decamped to a new building, initially known as New Jonathan's. But this name did not last long, as the Gentlemen s Magazine reported: "New Jonathan's came to the resolution that instead of its being called New Jonathan's, it should be called The Stock Exchange, which is to be wrote over the door." This establishment was the forerunner of the London Stock Exchange.
This period of rapid innovation in public and private finance, with the floating of joint-stock companies, the buying and selling of shares, the development of insurance schemes, and the public financing of government debt, all of which culminated in London's eventual displacement of Amsterdam as the world's financial center, is known today as the Financial Revolution. The need to fund expensive colonial wars made it necessary, and the fertile intellectual environment and speculative spirit of the coffeehouses made it possible. The financial equivalent of the Principia was The Wealth of Nations, written by the Scottish economist Adam Smith. It described and championed the emerging doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism, according to which the best way for governments to encourage trade and prosperity was to leave people to their own devices. Smith wrote much of his book in the British Coffee House, his base and postal address in London, and a popular meeting place for Scottish intellectuals, among whom he circulated chapters of his book for criticism and comment. So it was that London's coffeehouses were the crucibles of the scientific and financial revolutions that shaped the modern world.
Revolution by the Cup
As the Financial Revolution was under way in England, revolution of a different kind was brewing in France. During the eighteenth century, Enlightenment thought in France had flowered under thinkers, such as the philosopher and satirist Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, who extended the new scientific rationalism into the social and political spheres. After offending a nobleman with a witticism in 1726, Voltaire had been imprisoned in the Bastille prison in Paris and was only released on condition that he went to England. While there he immersed himself in the scientific rationalism of Isaac Newton and the empiricism espoused by the philosopher John Locke. Just as Newton had rebuilt physics from first principles, Locke set out to do the same for political philosophy. Men were born equal, he believed, were intrinsically good and were entitled to the pursuit of happiness. No man should interfere with another's life, health, liberty, or possessions. Inspired by these radical ideas, Voltaire returned to France and detailed his views in a book, Lettres philosophiques, which compared the French system of government unfavorably with a somewhat idealized description of the English system. As a result, the book was immediately banned.
A similar fate befell the Encyclopedic compiled by Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, the first volume of which appeared in 1751. Its contributors included Voltaire, along with other leading French thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu who, like Voltaire, had been greatly influenced by Locke. With such a lineup of contributors, it is hardly surprising that the Encyclopedic came to be seen as the definitive summary of Enlightenment thinking. It promoted a rational, secular view of the world founded on scientific determinism, denounced ecclesiastical and legal abuses of power, and infuriated the religious authorities, who successfully lobbied for it, too, to be banned. Diderot quietly continued his work even so, and the Encyclopedic was eventually completed in 1772, with each of its twenty-eight volumes delivered to subscribers in secret.
As in London, the coffeehouses of Paris were meeting places for intellectuals and became centers of Enlightenment thought. Diderot actually compiled the Encyclopedic in a Paris coffeehouse, the Cafe de la Regence, which he used as his office. He recalled in his memoirs that his wife used to give him nine sous each morning to pay for a day's worth of coffee. Yet it was in the coffeehouses that the contrast between France and England was especially apparent. In London, coffeehouses were places of unrestrained political discussion and were even used as the headquarters of political parties. The English writer Jonathan Swift remarked that he was "not yet convinced that any Access to men in Power gives a man more Truth or Light than the Politicks of a Coffee House." Miles's coffeehouse was the meeting place of a regular discussion group, founded in 1659 and known as the "Amateur Parliament." Pepys observed that its debates were "the most ingeniose, and smart, that I ever heard, or expect to heare, and bandied with great eagernesse; the argumen
ts in the Parliament howse were but flatte to it." After debates, he noted, the group would hold a vote using a "wooden oracle," or ballot box—a novelty at the time. No wonder one French visitor to London, the Abbe Prevost, declared that London's coffeehouses, "where you have the right to read all the papers for and against the government," were the "seats of English liberty."
The situation in Paris was very different. Coffeehouses abounded—six hundred had been established by 1750—and, as in London, they were associated with particular topics or lines of business. Poets and philosophers gathered at the Cafe Par-nasse and the Cafe Procope, whose regular patrons included Rousseau, Diderot, d'Alembert, and the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin. Voltaire had a favorite table and chair at the Procope, and a reputation for drinking dozens of cups of coffee a day. Actors gathered at the Cafe Anglais, musicians at Cafe Alexandre, army officers at the Cafe des Armes, while the Cafe des Aveugles doubled as a brothel. Unlike the salons frequented by the aristocracy, the French coffeehouses were open to all, even to women. According to one eighteenth-century account, "The coffee-houses are visited by respectable persons of both sexes: we see among them many various types: men-about-town, coquettish women, abbes, country bumpkins, journalists, the parties to a law-suit, drinkers, gamesters, parasites, adventurers in the field of love or industry, young men of letters—in a word, an unending series of persons." Within a coffeehouse, the egalitarian society to which Enlightenment thinkers aspired might, on the surface, appear to have been brought to life.
But the circulation of information in French coffeehouses, in both spoken and written form, was subject to strict government oversight. With tight curbs on freedom of the press and a bureaucratic system of state censorship, there were far fewer sources of news than in England or Holland. This led to the emergence of handwritten newsletters of Paris gossip, transcribed by dozens of copyists and sent by post to subscribers in Paris and beyond. (Since they were not printed, they did not need government approval.) The lack of a free press also meant that poems and songs passed around on scraps of paper, along with coffeehouse gossip, were important sources of news for many Parisians. Even so, patrons had to watch what they said, for the coffeehouses were filled with government spies. Anyone who spoke out against the state risked being imprisoned in the Bastille. The archives of the Bastille contain reports of hundreds of trivial coffeehouse conversations, noted down by police informers. "At the Cafe de Foy someone said that the king had taken a mistress, that she was named Gontaut, and that she was a beautiful woman, the niece of the due de Noailles," reads one report from the 1720s. "Jean-Louis Le Clerc made the following remarks in the Cafe de Procope: that there never has been a worse king; that the court and the ministers make the king do shameful things, which utterly disgust his people," reads another, from 1749.