Coffee and Comfort

Coffee in history and story

What could be more logical and sensible to introduce to your cozy fantasy than a coffeehouse?

Well, lots of things.

Depending on your setting, of course.

A steampunk setting would find it very logical indeed. This is because, assuming a history rather like ours, coffeehouses would already exist, even if not where your character wants to build one.

A medieval one --

For world-building purposes, coffee has the advantage that it was introduced in the full light of history and was well-documented in the process.

Not the origin itself. That is wrapped in legend, and some of them are impossible, giving the discovery a date several centuries too early. (Though it certainly tells you what sort of stories you can make up.) It also, apparently, could have been discovered much earlier if that’s what you want.

But the drinking begins to appear in the 15th century, in Yemen, and spread outward from there. After the medieval era.

With a range of consequences.

For instance, in some Muslim areas, there was a concerted effort to ban it, arguing that because caffeine is a mind-altering drug, it fell under the prohibition against drunkenness.

That was an extreme reaction. Not very successful. Frequently derided on the grounds that alcohol made you sleepy, while coffee kept the believer awake, alert, and able to do his duties.

But coffee produced all the usual effects of a wide-spread fad.

The most obvious -- the most pervasive whenever your characters introduce, or stumble on, something new -- is people grumbling about this newfangled nonsense. You can, if you wish, treat them as fools, but that is because you, and your readers, have the advantage of hindsight. The characters chasing after the fad did not, in fact, know that it would not bring harm.

Indeed, if characters discover that coffee wakes you up when you are sleepy from too much alcohol, the grumblers will be right. Caffeine does not sober you up. It makes you a drunk who is wide awake. This is a problem. Often actively dangerous.

Even without that, at the very least, coffee-drinkers would tend to be those who chase novelties, who do not tend to be sober and respectable citizens on the whole. One also notes that in the days when any artificial form of light was expensive, rising with the sun and going to bed with it was commendable frugality. Something that would keep you awake at night was -- not commendable. Except for special cases when staying awake for the night was a good thing, such as vigils, or travel in hot climates.

Your character, opening a coffeehouse, may face another problem: a great rush of business as people try out the novelty, followed by a great crash as people go off to try the next newest thing. This will be mitigated a bit if this is a coffeehouse, such as they have in the capital and other large cities, and rather more if it is a neighborhood coffeehouse. But it’s a factor, and not one contributing the cozy effect.

Besides the novelty of coffee, there is also the novelty of the coffeehouse. Which produced reactions.

Pious Muslims decried the decline of hospitality. Where, before, you had to invite a man to your home, now you could just see him enter the coffeehouse, and shout that you were standing him a drink of coffee, and you treated it as if it were the same thing. Plus, the places also had drinking, singing, reciting poetry -- which contributed to the claim of drunkenness.

This was less pronounced in Europe where you already had the alehouse. However, the coffeehouse gained a reputation for plotting, for troublemakers, for those who would cause upheaval. Perhaps it was just the novelty. Or perhaps it was that the coffee kept the drinkers alert, and able to think, and plot. But, it gained the reputation.

You may think of coffee as cozy, but that’s because it’s something you are used to. If you introduce it to a fantasy world where it’s new, it’s unlikely to be cozy in effect. Much more prudent world-building to build on what is there for the cozy.