historyThe Public Domain Review1652 · London, England
London's coffeehouses helped give birth to the stock exchange and insurance market
London's first coffeehouse opened in 1652, when Pasqua Rosée, a Greek servant of a British merchant, sold coffee from a stall near the Royal Exchange. Coffee quickly became a craze, and by 1663 there were 82 coffeehouses, with contemporaries estimating between 1,000 and 8,000 by the early 1700s, though a 1734 street survey counted 551 licensed ones. Coffeehouses were open to anyone who could afford the penny entrance, so they became places where merchants, scholars and newsmongers mixed. Traders at Lloyd's, Jonathan's and Garraway's developed the stock exchange, insurance and auctions there. Each house had its own crowd: scholars at one, dandies or politicians at another. In 1674 wives signed the Women's Petition Against Coffee, complaining their husbands idled away their time, and in 1675 Charles II tried to close the houses but backed down in the face of protest.
London's coffeehouses show how ordinary conversation and gossip in public rooms turned into the financial institutions that still shape modern trade. They also made political debate open to people beyond the social elite, a new development that alarmed the authorities. The story reminds us that the commercial infrastructure of the modern world grew out of very ordinary places.
Lloyd's of London grew out of a coffeehouse run by Edward Lloyd, where shipping information was traded.
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A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café, is an establishment that serves various types of coffee drinks like espresso, latte, americano, and cappuccino, as well as other beverages. An espresso bar specializes in serving espresso and espresso-based drinks. Some coffeehouses may serve iced coffee among other cold drinks, as well as non-caffeinated drinks. A coffeehouse may also serve food, such as light snacks, sandwiches, muffins, cakes, breads, pastries, or doughnuts. Many doughnut shops in Canada and the US serve coffee to accompany doughnuts, so these can also be classified as coffee shops, although doughnut shops tend to be more casual and serve cheaper fare (suiting take-out and drive-through, popular in those countries). In continental Europe, some cafés even serve alcoholic drinks, and in West Asia, coffeehouses may offer a flavored tobacco smoked through a hookah, called shisha in most varieties of Arabic or nargile in Levantine Arabic, Greek, and Turkish.
From Wikipedia: Coffeehouse (CC BY-SA 4.0) ↗
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