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Maybe much more prosaic. The British were gin-soaked do-nothings running under an obsolete feudal system. Then coffee got introduced to London. Result: caffeine
by JoeAltmaier 3y ago
Maybe much more prosaic. The British were gin-soaked do-nothings running under an obsolete feudal system. Then coffee got introduced to London. Result: caffeine-fueled economic, military and scientific explosion.
- pavlov 3y agoThis could also explain how Finland went from famine-stricken illiterate backwater in the late 19th century to a sophisticated social-democratic market economy a hundred years later. Finns drink the most coffee per capita in the world — it was just a question of getting a steady coffee supply.
- enqk 3y agoprobably thanks to other substances, fossil fuels
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- njarboe 3y agoPlus tobacco.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoThat's backwards. Coffee was introduced into England before 1600. The first coffee house opened in Oxford in 1650. The explosion in the consumption of distilled spirits was half a century later, fuelled by the governments encouragement of the distilling industry and banning of French imports of spirrits. Hogarth's gin lane is from 1751.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JoeAltmaier 3y ago1675 was the heydey - 3000 coffee houses in England, many of those in London
- cafard 3y agoBut distilled liquors were a product of the Industrial Revolution. Of course it is perfectly possible to go about in an alcoholic haze on fermented drinks--Samuel Johnson said that the people in his hometown were soberer on wine than they had been on beer. But the scientific explosion preceded the gin.