How Coffee Fueled the Age of Enlightenment

Feb 1

The Age of Enlightenment, roughly spanning the 17th and 18th centuries, is remembered as a time of reason, scientific discovery, and intellectual revolution. But there’s a less obvious fuel behind the era’s great debates and discoveries: coffee. Before coffee arrived in Europe, alcohol was often the safer alternative to contaminated water. People drank beer or wine throughout the day, which, while fun, didn’t exactly make for clear-headed thinking.

When coffeehouses began popping up, everything changed. Instead of sedating the mind, coffee stimulated it. Ideas flowed as quickly as the drinks. In London, the first coffeehouse opened in 1652, and within a few decades, there were hundreds. They became meeting places for scientists, philosophers, artists, and merchants.

French philosopher Voltaire was a famous coffee devotee, allegedly drinking up to 50 cups a day. “I think it is the favorite drink of the civilized world,” Thomas Jefferson later said about coffee and in the Enlightenment era, it certainly was. Coffeehouses became breeding grounds for revolutionary ideas.

Some historians believe that without coffeehouses, the modern stock exchange might never have formed. In London, Jonathan’s Coffee House became the unofficial headquarters for stockbrokers, eventually evolving into the London Stock Exchange.

So while the Enlightenment was about reason and progress, it’s safe to say caffeine played a starring role. Coffee didn’t just wake people up… it woke up an entire age.