A Bitter Legacy: Coffee, Identity, and Cultural Memory in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Abstract

The British coffeehouse has been the recipient of immense scholarly attention since Jürgen Habermas identified it as the paradigm of his public sphere, a space in which private and public interests intersected. But all of these histories end, somewhat abruptly, in the mid-eighteenth century. But coffee consumption never actually disappeared from British life, a fact that is supported by an abundance of evidence in the archives. In fact, British coffee consumption played a key role in nineteenth-century debates over British social and economic identity in the midst of an expanding empire. Expanding our view of British coffee culture to include the nineteenth century allows us to situate coffee in the context of Britain's empire as its contours evolved, and see how behaviors cultivated in and popularized by coffeehouses helped Britons negotiate their role in an increasingly interconnected world.