Date: May 10th
Category: Cultural History | Hidden Resistance
Forget your local hipster café with oat milk and ironic signage. The original coffeehouses were hotbeds of radical thought, literary subversion, and political scheming — and that’s before the second cup.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, coffeehouses weren’t just places to get your daily caffeine fix. They were the unofficial headquarters of revolution. A penny for a cup of coffee got you access to newspapers, pamphlets, gossip, and debates. No aristocratic gatekeeping. Just ideas. Brewing.
So pull up a wooden stool, ditch the Wi-Fi, and let The Time Traveller’s Guild take you on a whistle-stop tour of the coffeehouses that changed history.
🏛️ The Penny University – England, c. 1650
The first English coffeehouse opened in Oxford in 1650, founded by a Jewish immigrant named Jacob. It was soon dubbed “The Penny University” — because, for a penny, you could sit and learn more than you might in a week of lectures.
By the late 1600s, London had over 500 coffeehouses, each with its own niche:
- Lloyd’s Coffee House catered to shipping merchants and eventually became Lloyd’s of London.
- Button’s was frequented by literary figures like Addison and Steele.
- The Grecian attracted scientists and philosophers — Isaac Newton is said to have dissected a dolphin there (best enjoyed after the croissant).
☕ Women were banned from many of these spaces — so, naturally, they wrote angry pamphlets in protest.
📢 Brewing Rebellion in France
In Paris, coffeehouses became the salons of the common man. Unlike aristocratic salons, cafés were egalitarian, if slightly smoky.
- The Café Procope hosted Voltaire, Diderot, and Robespierre.
- By the 1780s, cafés were where revolutionaries read out radical pamphlets, planned uprisings, and sometimes stormed off to storm the Bastille.
📍 A Paris café is allegedly where the phrase “Let them eat cake” was first sarcastically misattributed.
📚 Coffee, Empire & Surveillance
The Ottoman Empire got there first. Coffee culture flourished in Constantinople, where 16th-century coffeehouses were centres of poetry, chess, and subversion.
So dangerous were the discussions that Sultan Murad IV banned coffee outright in the 1620s — under penalty of death.
☠️ Being caught with a coffee cup could get you beheaded. But still, people brewed. That’s commitment.
🗺️ Where to Sip Like a Revolutionary
Still standing:
- ☕ Café Procope, Paris – Oldest café in Paris, still full of chandeliers and ghostly gossip.
- ☕ Maison Cailler, Switzerland – Where Enlightenment thinkers gathered over chocolate and coffee.
- ☕ Caffè Florian, Venice – A haunt of Byron and Casanova, still doling out espresso and scandal.
In Britain:
- ☕ Visit Guildhall Library, London, for 18th-century coffeehouse records.
- ☕ The site of Lloyd’s Coffee House is now a Lloyd’s Bank — poetic, no?
🛍️ Caffeine & Conspiracy: Guild Shop Drop
Celebrate the revolutionary roots of your flat white with our “Resist & Brew” range:
- Porcelain mugs with real 17th-century protest quotes
- Cotton tote bags: “Death Before Decaf (1683)”
- Notebook set: “This Meeting Could’ve Been a Coffeehouse”
📚 Want to Know More?
- The Social Life of Coffee by Brian Cowan (Essential reading)
- Coffee: A Dark History by Antony Wild
- British Library Coffeehouse Archive
- Revolutionary Paris, 1789–1799 – Maps and café mentions included!
📸 Instagram Challenge: #ResistAndBrew
Show us your most subversive brew! Whether it’s sipping tea in Regency cosplay or plotting societal overhaul with a cappuccino — tag @TimeTravellersGuild and use #ResistAndBrew to join the caffeinated resistance.
