With this in mind, the historical narrative around the 18th– and 19th-century coffee shops in Europe needs revision. Linked to the emergence of the public sphere and by extension modern democratic values, the European coffeehouses are effectively the descendants of the dynamic early modern Islamic coffeehouse culture. As a fix to this Euro-centric hangover, decolonization of history strongly requires us to wake up and smell the history of coffee in its entirety – starting with its Islamic roots and flourishes.
London’s coffee craze began in 1652 when Pasqua Rosée, the Greek servant of a coffee-loving British Levant merchant, opened London’s first coffeehouse (or rather, coffee shack) against the stone wall of St Michael’s churchyard in a labyrinth of alleys off Cornhill. Coffee was a smash hit; within a couple of years, Pasqua was selling over 600 dishes of coffee a day to the horror of the local tavern keepers. For anyone who’s ever tried seventeenth-century style coffee, this can come as something of a shock — unless, that is, you like your brew “black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love”, as an old Turkish proverb recommends, and shot through with grit.
